Faithful unto Death

Chapter Seven

Think of a figure. Double it. Add on your weight in kilos, your National Insurance number and the National Debt. Take away the figure you first thought of and you’d still be hard pushed to come up with the degrees centigrade registered in the CID’s outer office. The coolest place in the building was the inoperative boiler room.

The heatwave had been going on now for over a week. Chief Inspector Barnaby, gradually dissolving in his fourth floor office, thought the term singularly inept. Waves, whatever their temperature, moved. He was sitting in stationary air the consistency of thick soup. A large fan on his desk heaved hot gollops of it back and forth.

After sleeping badly, Barnaby was feeling bad-tempered and depressed. He had dozed off around half past four after spending hours turning the Hollingsworth mystery over and over in his mind.

There had been an extremely vivid and unpleasant dream just seconds before he woke. He was standing in the greenhouse watching a small, insignificant insect crawling up a pane of glass. He reached out and squashed it with his nail. A tiny spot of reddish brown liquid spurted out. This was followed by another, larger display which ran down the glass in a thin but steady stream. Then a quick gush of much brighter fluid followed by an absolute avalanche of thick, scarlet foam. Barnaby, his hands and jacket sleeves suddenly drenched, had recoiled in horror.

He pushed the image to the back of his mind by tackling the daily papers. Simone’s picture was on the front page of all the tabloids, accompanied by some barmily imaginative headlines. Alan had been posthumously promoted to Gordon Gecko status: Dead Tycoon’s Blonde Lovely Vanishes! Madonna Lookalike Kidnapped! Have You Seen Sexy Simone—Tragic Widow of Top Financier?

At least, thought the Chief Inspector, shoving aside the Sun, they’d been spared Phew! What A Corker!

He flipped through the small handful of house-to-house reports that it was thought were worth putting on his desk but discovered that all of them merely confirmed material that was already on record. He noticed, too, that so far Sarah Lawson had been unavailable on each occasion the police had called and decided he would attempt to visit her himself. As it was Saturday there was a fair chance he would find her in.

The SOCO report on Nightingales’ garden and garage, also on his desk, revealed little of real interest. Fingertip searches had found nothing out of the ordinary. The baked earth yielded no footprints, nor were there any disturbed or broken plants. At the far end of the back garden was a tough and densely growing hedge of spiny berberis. Impossible to either climb or push through without leaving plenty of evidence that one had done so.

All the prints in the garage belonged to Alan Hollingsworth. Nothing untoward had been found there. Gardening tools and a mower. Boxes with half-empty paint tins and some wallpaper but no brushes, turps, rags or rollers. Presumably the Hollingsworths employed a decorator when they needed the place tarting up. It was the car Barnaby was interested in. He picked up his phone, buzzed Forensic and asked how long the report on this would be.

“Any minute now.”

“You mean next week?”

“You know your trouble, Chief Inspector?” said Aubrey. “You’ve no faith in the system.”

“I can’t think why.”

As Barnaby replaced the receiver, Sergeant Troy came in and placed a single cup of coffee on his desk. Barnaby immediately wondered what on earth had driven him to ask for it in this weather. Habit, probably. Yet the first sip was very enjoyable.

“Sergeant Brierley’s in the incident room, chief.” Taut as a wound-up spring, he was, a quivery snap to the voice. “You asked me to let you know when she came in.”

“Thank you.” Not all the door-to-door team had returned when Barnaby had left the previous night. He was particularly interested in discovering how things were at the Brockleys.

“You sound rather sour, Gavin. Been putting you through it, has she, our Audrey?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything but since you mention it,” Troy’s Adam’s apple rose and fell rapidly, “how come it’s suddenly not OK for me to call her Miss Canteloupe of the year but perfectly OK for her to call me a talking dick?”

“It’s called redressing the balance,” said Barnaby. Then, before the conversation could predictably touch on swings and roundabouts, he added, “Anything worthwhile in over the last half-hour?”

“I notice she don’t have to go on no Behavioural Correction Course.”

“I asked you a question.”

Troy pursed his lips. You were supposed to talk about what was worrying you these days in the new, caring sharing cop shop. Lob in for a spot of counselling if you were the wet, spineless sort.

“Well, there’s been a call from that poncy jeweller in Bond Street. Recognises Hollingsworth’s photo. He is definitely the bloke who bought the necklace. Didn’t clock Simone though. Putting it all in writing for us.”

“Excellent.”

“Got the photo fax from Harpers on the actual article. Bloody spectacular, it is. Bet she had to spend some hours on her back to pay for that.”

“For Christ’s sake, man.”

“What?”

“The woman’s been put through hell. By now she’s probably dead.”

Won’t give a toss what I say then, will she? Troy watched the Brazilian disappearing down Barnaby’s gullet and thought he was a funny bloke, the gaffer. If he hadn’t seen him with his back against the wall fighting his corner, or making an arrest when the bloke was not only armed but high as a kite on amphetamines, or hanging halfway down a cliff trying to talk up some woman who’d drowned her baby—if Troy had not seen all these things and plenty more besides, he might well have got the impression that the DCI was a touch soft-headed.

They took the lift down to the incident room. Neither man spoke but the younger sneaked a couple of glances sideways. Barnaby looked stern. Imperturbable, you might say, should you be fortunate enough to have access to Talisa-Leanne Troy’s dictionary. The sergeant decided that the chief was cast down at the total lack of possible faces to put in the frame. He could not have been more wrong.

Unlike his bag carrier, who liked things cut and dried as soon as was humanly possible, Barnaby was quite happy to drift, for a short while at least, in what some early mystic once called the cloud of unknowing. He was also reflecting, with a considerable degree of satisfaction, on the recent departure of his bête noir, Inspector Ian Meredith, a smug Oxbridge know-all from Bramshill, the police training college for the elite. Deciding, like Alexander the Great, to declare himself a god at the age of thirty-two, Meredith had promptly been elevated to the Flying Squad. The whole station had been relieved to see him go. No one wanted the nephew of the Chief Constable sniffing round the place.

The incident room was not what you’d call lively. Phones were ringing, sure. Staff were studying the notice-boards. Material was being logged and there was a regular low buzz of conversation as information was exchanged, checked, or cross-referenced. But the near frenzy of barely contained activity that could be generated at the start of an urgent or especially dramatic investigation was markedly absent.

Sergeant Brierley not being immediately visible, Barnaby went to the reader’s desk to catch up on what was currently coming in. As he had expected, there was more hearsay and suggestion than hard facts. Dozens of people thought they had seen Simone. On a ferry to France. Sleeping in a doorway in Glasgow. At a bistro in Old Compton Street, plainly under the influence of drugs. And dancing on a table in the Old Dun Cow, Milton Keynes.

But there was something really solid from the marketday bus passengers. Two women plus a toddler in a pushchair had followed Simone into Bobby’s, Causton’s only department store. She had gone into the Ladies, as they had themselves. Both had used the toilet but Simone had still not come out by the time they left. Now, wise after the event, both were convinced that “poor Mrs. Hollingsworth” had been hiding “from those dreadful people who were after her.”

Alan’s first wife had been traced and interviewed in Birkenhead where, after remarrying, she was still working as a general practioner. Barnaby picked up the fascimiled sheets and settled at a desk to read them.

Miriam Anderson, as she now was, had last heard from her previous husband just before his second marriage. He had sent her and her husband an invitation accompanied by what Dr. Anderson described as a pathetic and childish letter. This described his present happiness in glowing terms. It also dwelt at some length on the youth, beauty and sweetness of his bride. And on how much she adored him.

“I suppose the idea,” read Barnaby, “was to make me realise, now it was too late, what I’d thrown away. To be honest, it just made me laugh. I was never more glad to escape from anyone than I was from Alan Hollingsworth. And it was not easy by a long chalk. For weeks after I came back up here he was either on the telephone begging me to come back or driving up to the Wirral and making a nuisance of himself. It was only when I threatened to go to the police that he kept away. Even then, for several months, I was bombarded with letters. In the end I used to chuck them in the bin, unopened.”

Asked in more detail about her first marriage, Dr. Anderson more or less repeated what Barnaby had already heard from Gray Patterson. On hearing of Hollingsworth’s death, she had assumed it was suicide. Although he had never threatened her, he had threatened to harm himself on more than one occasion when she talked about leaving him.

Dr. Anderson could contribute nothing useful as to the matter or manner of Simone’s abduction. On both dates relevant to the inquiry she had been provably elsewhere.

Not much meat there—Barnaby pushed the sheets of paper aside—but it was useful to have at least part of Patterson’s statement confirmed.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Audrey.” He smiled at the sight of her. At her shining cap of blonde hair and peachy skin and tranquil, shining eyes. You couldn’t help it. She gave him a slight but grave smile in return.

“I was going to wait for briefing but Gavin said you were looking for some feedback on the house-to-house straightaway.”

Gavin—not Skipper, not Sergeant. Since Audrey had been made up, such respectful distinctions had melted away. And oh, how Troy resented it. The years of pulling rank—and no one pulls rank like the chronically insecure—had come to an end overnight. Barnaby watched with some amusement as Audrey more than came into her own.

“That’s right. How did you get on at the Brockleys?”

“They’re absolutely distraught about their daughter. She still hasn’t come back.”

“And there’s been no more messages?”

“Nothing. They seem to think we’re actively looking for her. It was a bit awkward, sir.”

“I’m sure.”

“I couldn’t tell them there’s no way we can spend time or resources on a missing person’s file unless special circumstances make it necessary.”

“Well, let’s hope they don’t.”

“As you suggested, I asked if they had noticed anything at all in the way of comings and goings next door. And I got a really good result.”

“Excellent. Let’s have it then.”

“Neither of them have been sleeping much. I gathered that most of their time’s been spent staring out of the window, more or less willing Brenda home. Unlike Mr. Dawlish, they not only heard Hollingsworth drive away the night he died, but they also heard him come back just before eleven. What’s more, they saw him.”

“Ahh,” said the Chief Inspector aware, even as he spoke, of the muscles in his throat slowly tightening. “Clearly?”

“Very. There’s a powerful halogen lamp by Nightingales’ garage. Any approach switches it on. He didn’t get out of the car—the garage is remote-controlled—but Iris is absolutely sure it was him. They both paid very close attention. Being excited, you see, when a car turned into the close.”

“They would be, poor devils. Was he by himself?”

“Yes. Reg said you could see right into the Volvo. There was no one else in the car.”

“And afterwards?” His stomach became still and cold, then squeezed itself up into an apprehensive ball, as if in expectation of a blow.

“I’m sorry sir. Nothing.”

“Don’t do this to me, Audrey.”

“No one came to the house, Chief Inspector. Iris watched until nearly one. Then she had a rest and Reg took over till daylight.”

“Which window was this?”

“Brenda’s bedroom. It overlooks the drive next door.”

“One or the other must’ve dozed off.”

“They say not.”

“Made some tea, then. Went to the loo. Christ, they’re only human.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It would only take a minute. Seconds, even. All we need is Brockley momentarily distracted and whoever murdered Hollingsworth would be across the forecourt and knocking on Nightingales’ door.”

“You think they were waiting, then? Concealed somewhere?”

“Yes, I do.” Because the alternative, that there was no one waiting and that Hollingsworth, alone in the house, had taken his own life, was insupportable. Barnaby had abandoned that possibility for good and all within minutes of finding the body and he had no intention of reclaiming it.

“They saw no one leave?”

“No, Chief Inspector.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. They kept watching but after this only caught what everyone else did. SOCO about the place, officers guarding the house. That sort of thing.”

“Sod them, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was just about that time, almost to the second, in fact, that Mrs. Molfrey cried out, “Eureka!”

Not in her bath, as things turned out, but while rootling around with a little hoe among the foxgloves and delphiniums. It was always the case, she thought, flinging down the implement and tottering up the garden path as fast as her twiggy old legs could carry her. Dwell and dwell upon something, seek it out, give it your undivided time and attention and where were you? Up the proverbial gum tree. But put it from your mind, thumb your nose at it even, and here it was, high-kicking its way into your consciousness for all it was worth.

Mrs. Molfrey had placed Barnaby’s card directly underneath the heavy Bakelite telephone so had no need to hunt for it. She picked it up with trembling hands. Her fingers trembled as she dialled the number and her lips trembled as she prepared to speak. Her mind shook and trembled under the load of this surely revelatory snippet of information.

She was reminded of The Case of the Chocolate Scorpion. In this rather racy thirties crime novel an elderly lady, not all that unlike herself (except rather eccentric) had overheard a fragment of conversation through her ear trumpet whilst playing baccarat. Meaningless in itself, she had had the wit to relate these few sentences to the larger pattern of a crime with which the police of five continents had been unsuccessfully wrestling. At the end of the story she was awarded the OBE. Mrs. Molfrey exhaled wistfully. No one seemed to write books like that any more.

She got through to an answerphone. Much alarmed, for she had a horror of modern gadgetry, Mrs. Molfrey immediately replaced the receiver. She had expected Barnaby to be in his office, awaiting her call. An unreasonable assumption, she now realised. Of course he would be out and about measuring footprints, analysing cigar ash or scraping telltale mud from a sinister pair of galoshes.

Pausing only to wonder if the single of galoshes was galosh, Mrs. Molfrey made her way outside again. It was impossible to keep such a dazzling discovery to herself for more than a minute. Cubby had taken some calabrese to Ostlers but would surely be on his way back by now. Reaching the gate, Mrs. Molfrey leaned on it to get her breath back. And then, oh joy! who should appear but Constable Perrot.

Hardly of a comparable rank to her would-be confidant, he was nonetheless of the same persuasion and, as such, a more than satisfactory courier. Mrs. Molfrey cried, “Cooee!” and fluttered her tiger-striped organza pelerine.

PC Perrot was just wheeling his Honda out of Nightingales’ forecourt. He had made a point of arriving almost half an hour before the postman, to be on the safe side. He had even remembered to bring some gardening gloves, the only sort he owned, should there be any letters to handle. There were three. He stowed them carefully away in his pannier.

“Good morning, Mrs. Molfrey.”

“I’m all of a tremble,” said Mrs. Molfrey using, for the first time ever, a phrase much favoured by Heather’s grandma.

“Is there something I can do?”

“Yes, indeed. There’s good news to be taken from Aix to Ghent. Are you my man, Constable Perrot?”

“Pardon?”

“Can I rely on you?”

“Yes.” Perrot’s reply was immediate and unthinking. He may not know precisely where Aix and Ghent hung out but reliable he knew, no question.

“Your chief is expecting to hear from me. Indeed he gave me his personal number to that effect but seems to be out of his office at the moment. Hot on the job, no doubt.”

“More than likely, Mrs. Molfrey,” said PC Perrot, mentally filing the conversation to entertain Trixie at suppertime.

“Will you be seeing him at all?”

“Going over to the station right now, as a matter of fact.”

“Then you’ll pass the information on.” She explained her message clearly.

It made no sense to Constable Perrot. Indeed, he wondered briefly if it was in some sort of code. There was that word Youree? Uri ... ? Yewree something.

“Eureka?” Questioned, Mrs. Molfrey told him not to worry. “You can leave that out. It’s not really germane.”

Perrot, already wondering how much of the rest he could safely leave out, mounted his Honda and revved up.

“Remember, not a chink or chime!”

“With you, Mrs. Molfrey.”

“And why not, Constable? Why not? That is the question to which we must now address ourselves.”

Perrot lifted a hand in salute, realised he was still wearing his emerald and bright yellow cotton gloves and took them off. Halfway up the lane he passed Cubby Dawlish and saluted again, this time with feelings of the deepest sympathy.

Barnaby was still in the incident room when Constable Perrot arrived at the station proudly bearing his envelopes. He placed them on the desk in front the Chief Inspector, took a modest step back and waited.

“Left your prints all over these, have you, Constable?”

“Damn!” Perrot leapt into explanation. “I was—that is, I only. Gloves off a moment. Gardening—I remembered specially. Waylaid the postma—”

“Spare me the sordid details.” Barnaby regarded the envelopes sourly. An AA magazine, an electricity bill and a Racing Green catalogue.

“Anything else to report?”

“Well, I hardly like ... I’m sure it’s nothing really ...”

At this point Sergeant Troy strolled up. He placed himself directly behind the Chief Inspector’s desk, parted his thin, dry lips and bared his teeth.

“Wotcha, Poll.”

“Good morning, Sergeant.”

“Quark, quark.”

As Perrot stood there in the painful spotlight of Troy’s sneering regard, he imagined himself stumbling through Mrs. Molfrey’s message. If it had sounded more than a little wonky in the quiet country lane at Fawcett Green, how much wonkier would it sound here?

Perrot looked around at the busy room; all professional ordered activity. Intelligent ordered activity. Don’t show yourself up, Colin.

“Get on with it then.”

“Pardon?”

“Whatever it is that’s ‘nothing really.’ ”

“I’m afraid it’s slipped my mind, sir.”

Troy laughed out loud at this. A harsh, raucous bark.

“I should clear off back to the village then, Constable,” said Barnaby.

“And when you get there I’d like you to do something for me.”

“Yes, Chief Inspector.”

“It’s a bit complicated but I’m sure, with a modicum of serious application, you can handle it.”

“Sir.” Perrot straightened his back in readiness.

“Pick up the keys to Nightingales from the solicitors Fanshawe and Clay and check whether or not the switch for the halogen light, which you’ll find in the garage, is in the On position.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And—Oi! Poll?”

PC Perrot, now halfway to the exit, halted, sighed and turned round.

His cheeks still glowed as a result of the Chief Inspector’s irony.

“Sergeant?”

“Canteen’s in the basement if you want a bite of lunch.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“It’s seed cake on Wednesdays. And cuttlefish omelette.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of playing Long John Silver?” asked Barnaby when the door had closed on the hapless policeman.

“Who?”

“A pirate.”

“Well-endowed, was he?” asked Sergeant Troy.

At that moment a messenger from Forensic came in bearing a stout envelope containing SOCO’s report on Hollingsworth’s Audi.

There were few surprises. The boot had been empty but for the spare wheel and a jack. Apart from a single set of unidentified prints on the handles of the rear door, all the fingerprints in the car were those of Alan Hollingsworth, as were some hairs found on the driver’s head rest. There were none on the passenger’s side or in the rest of the vehicle. Indeed, someone had put a note in the margin to say it looked as if the Audi had been recently valeted.

Valeted. Barnaby, who loathed all such posey phrasing, sucked his teeth with irritation. Anyone would think the bloody thing was being steam-pressed, wire-brushed and a stitch taken up in its upholstery. No doubt during these ministrations it would be asked if it had been on its holidays yet.

Valeted! For God’s sake.

The village shimmered in the blazing heat. The whitewashed edges of the kerb dazzled the eye and the hedges were thick with dust. At the side of the road the straw-coloured grass verges dried and crackled.

In the garden of Arcadia, Cubby Dawlish took an old zinc bowl with a wooden handle, lowered it almost to the very bottom of an ancient barrel and poured the silky rainwater round the base of his Glen Moy raspberries.

As he did this he wondered about Elfrida’s new piece of information. He was glad she had passed it on to their local bobby instead of the Chief Inspector who had called at their house. Not that Barnaby hadn’t been a very pleasant man but, placed very much at the top of the tree, as it were, he was bound to be extremely busy. Cubby could not bear the thought of Elfrida being brusquely dealt with. Or, much worse, being passed over to a younger person who might not appreciate just how much respect she was naturally entitled to. Who might even, God forbid, have a bit of a laugh at her expense.

As for the recollection itself, Cubby could not pretend he understood its significance. Secretly he suspected it would prove not to have any, though he would not have admitted this to Elfie for the world. She was already awaiting the CID’s response with such eager anticipation. Over the hedge Cubby could see Colin Perrot and wondered whether to call across and check out the situation. But before he could come to any decision on the matter, the policeman disappeared inside the garage.

Constable Perrot had made a detour on the way to Fawcett Green to pick up his camera. He was determined not only to obtain the exact information that the DCI had requested but to have photographic proof of same. Carefully he photographed first the sensor switch and, secondly, its immediate surroundings.

After this he wrote a short summary (a novella, merely) of the situation. He read it through, keenly aware, after his boob with Hollingsworth’s post, of the need to carry out this next allotted task with speed, efficiency and correctness. Barnaby’s threat of an alien posting was never far from his mind.

Once certain the report could not be improved, he locked up and roared away, relieved at having avoided both the inhabitants of Arcadia. Sooner or later he knew one of them was going to ask how Mrs. Molfrey’s red-hot, number-one star clue—which was how she described it—had been received. And then he was going to be in a right old pickle.

Fortunately Mrs. Molfrey was hardly likely to run into Barnaby and ask. Ignorant of the top echelons as he was, even Perrot knew that the officer running a murder investigation spends nearly all his time in the incident room.

Minutes after Perrot’s departure, Barnaby’s Rover turned into St. Chad’s Lane and pulled up outside Sarah Lawson’s cottage. A shabby red and white Citroën Quatre Chevaux was now parked on the spare patch of oily grass. Sergeant Troy stared at it, a sneer twisting his thin lips.

“Toys R Us, that’s where you pick them up. With one hand tied behind your back, most likely.”

Sweltering, mopping his brow with a large cotton handkerchief, Barnaby hove alongside.

“Kiddy cars,” continued Sergeant Troy. “And foreign at that. If more people bought British, we might not be in the mess we are today.”

“Got rid of the Nissan, have you then, Gavin?”

As well you know, you sarky old bugger. Troy made a mental note to watch his step. When over-heated, the boss was inclined to lash out, willy-nilly. A bit like Long John himself, no doubt.

Clouds of tiny butterflies, like scraps of fawn silk, fluttered over wallflowers and night-scented stock. Barnaby stood in the shade of the bay tree which presumably gave the cottage its name and admired them. Troy knocked on the front door with little result.

“She must be in if the Meccano set’s outside.”

“Not necessarily.” Barnaby moved to the nearest window. The type with lots of small panes framed in white painted metal. He glanced inside.

A woman was lying on a sofa covered by what looked like a brightly patterned rug. She had long hair which fanned out across the cushions that supported her. One of her arms hung limply over the side of the sofa, the other lay across her breast. Barnaby was reminded of a Burne-Jones illustration. Or the Millais painting of Ophelia in her watery grave.

He began to feel alarmed. There was no way, unless she was in a drugged stupor, that she would not have heard Troy’s knocking. The Chief Inspector tapped gently himself, this time on the glass, without result. Then, just as he was seriously considering breaking in, she sat up. And, very slowly, made her way across the room.

The first thing that struck him was that she looked very ill. The second that, even looking very ill, she was strikingly attractive. She opened the window slightly. He heard the music then. “Softly Awakes My Heart” from Samson and Delilah. It was sung in French, he guessed by Jessye Norman. Or maybe Marilyn Home.

She said, “What do you want?” Her breath was sour and cold. In the searing heat of the day, Barnaby shivered.

“Miss Lawson?”

“Yes.”

“We’re police officers. We’d like to talk to you for a moment about Mr. and Mrs. Hollingsworth from Nightingales.”

“Why me? I hardly knew them.”

“We’re not choosing you specially, miss,” said Sergeant Troy who was now also at the window. “This is part of a house-to-house.”

“A what?”

“We’re visiting everyone in the village. Just gathering general background information.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I believe someone has called once or twice before,” said Barnaby.

“Have they? I may have been in bed. I’m not well ...” Here she broke off, making a vague gesture with her left hand in the direction of the front entrance. The two detectives, rightly assuming they were now to be admitted, retraced their steps.

Once inside, having produced his warrant card and introduced himself and Sergeant Troy, Barnaby looked about him.

They had stepped straight into a room crowded with sunlight; the golden beams sought out powdery gatherings of dust and illuminated webby corners. It was a place full of colour and a certain ragamuffin charm. Apart from the sofa, there were a couple of saggy armchairs concealed under vividly striped and patterned durries. Several original paintings hung on the walls, mainly abstract but including one watercolour—pale sand, a limpid almost colourless sea, and sky like a taut sheet of amber silk. Books were everywhere. Stacked on the floor, jumbled about on shelves, piled on the furniture. None looked new. There were art and travel books, some essays. The Chief Inspector recognised the black spines of several well-worn Penguin classics. And marigolds: a blaze of orange in a black and white stone Dundee marmalade jar.

“May we?”

“I’m sorry, yes. Please. I’m sorry.” She switched off the music.

Troy sat down on a ladder-back chair painted with birds and flowers. Barnaby shifted a weighty Thames and Hudson volume on Goya then balanced his bulk on the edge of the sofa.

Sarah Lawson, having the air of someone poised for flight, remained standing. It was the intruders who appeared most at home.

“I understand,” began the Chief Inspector, “that you had arranged to visit Mrs. Hollingsworth on the day she disappeared.”

“That’s right.”

“Could you tell me why?” asked Barnaby when the ensuing silence had lasted a full minute.

“She had some stuff for my white elephant stall at the church fête. I went to pick it up. Knocked on the front door, got no reply. Tried round the back and found she’d left the box on the patio.”

“You were invited for tea as well, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“Was that a regular occurrence?”

“Not at all. No.”

Troy made a brief note and looked surreptitiously about him. As always when surrounded by evidence of any sort of creative or intellectual existence, he saw it as a criticism of his own life. Typically, he began to redress the balance.

All these books, snob music. His eye fell on a stained glass panel and a heap of clay. Fancy messing around with that stuff at her age. Like a kid with Plasticine. Pity she didn’t take a few minutes off to sweep up some of the grot. Or iron her clothes. He noticed with some satisfaction that the floorboards beneath the soft, washed out but still beautiful rugs were dirty. As a woman, he decided, she was a complete anachronism and it took a man of his cognisance to recognise it.

Delighted at this felicitous conclusion, he tuned back into the conversation. The governor was asking Sarah Lawson when she last saw Mrs. Hollingsworth.

“I really don’t remember.”

Barnaby was both patient and encouraging. “When she invited you for tea perhaps.”

“Ahh ...” Plainly she was grateful for the suggestion. “That was it. I don’t recall the exact date, I’m afraid.”

“The news of the kidnap must have come as a great shock.”

“It did to all of us. I still can’t quite ... I mean, it’s not something that happens to people you know.”

The times the Chief Inspector had heard either that remark or a close variation on the theme. Every day thousands of people were burgled, mugged, beaten up, raped, murdered, arsonised—if there was such a word—yet the confidence of the human race that they, their loved ones and acquaintances had personally been granted divine immunity was uncrackable.

“You work in adult education, I understand, Miss Lawson.”

“That’s right. At Blackthorn College, High Wycombe.”

“And Mrs. Hollingsworth came to your course for a while.”

“Yes, she did.”

“How did that come about exactly?”

“I’d been designing four glass panels for a conservatory. Just finished autumn—fruit, hips and haws, woodsmoke. It was resting up against the car waiting to be wrapped while I sorted out some sacking. Simone came by and pronounced it ‘totally wonderful’ and said she’d ‘positively adore’ to do something like that.

“Thinking she was only making conversation, I suggested she came along to a class sometime which she said she’d even more positively adore if only she had the transport. So then of course I felt constrained to offer her a lift which was a bit of a nuisance as I didn’t always want to come straight home.”

“Is that another of the pieces?” Barnaby had noticed it when he came in, leaning against the stone fireplace. Engraved with glittering snowflakes, stained dark green and crimson. Winter, no doubt.

Sarah nodded. Slowly she reached out a hand and brushed a speck of dust from a holly berry, glowing like a ruby. Then she rubbed a thorny stem gently with her sleeve. This involved turning her back on her visitors and Barnaby sensed a great relief as she did so.

“It’s very beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“You must have more work than you know what to do with.”

“Not really. There are a lot of arty-crafty people in this part of the world. And some of them are very good.”

“Do you ever do puppies or kittens, Miss Lawson?” asked Sergeant Troy. It was Maureen’s birthday soon and she loved a nice ornament. Be cheaper, he reckoned, to buy direct, especially from an amateur. Cut out the middle man.

“I’m afraid not.” There was a shred of colour in her voice for the first time—a faint shadow perhaps of indignation.

“Mrs. Hollingsworth’s was an afternoon class, I take it?” asked Barnaby.

“Oh yes. I don’t think she was allowed out in the evening.”

“Her husband kept her on a pretty short leash, it seems.”

“A choke chain, I’d call it.” For the first time her voice and expression became animated. As she turned away, her high cheekbones flushed, a soft dusky rose. She shook her head, it seemed to Barnaby, with irritation. The loose knot of hair loosened further, tumbling over her thin shoulders and concealing her long silver and carnelian earrings. Her pale gold hair, coarse and very thick, had several silver threads which glittered in the sunlight.

The Chief Inspector wondered how old she was. Somewhere, he surmised, between thirty and forty, probably nearer the latter. He got up and walked about with the air of a man needing to stretch his legs, thus bringing himself into a position where he could once more see her profile which was gravely intense. Noticing him, she gave a disturbed, nervous cough and again turned away.

“Could you give me the dates that Mrs. Hollingsworth attended your course, Miss Lawson?”

“Roughly, the last half of February. Part of March. The college will have an accurate register.”

“And do you know why she dropped out?”

“Apparently she hadn’t informed Alan what she was up to. I discovered later that it was his habit to ring up during the day to see if she was ‘all right,’ though what on earth could happen to her in a fast-asleep place like this ... Anyway, after the first class she told him she had been at Elfrida’s when he’d rung. The next week that she’d been having tea with Avis Jennings. The third that she’d just popped up to the shop. The following Wednesday he decided to be persistent. Rang several times during the four hours we were out and demanded to know just exactly where she had been when he came home.

“She told him. God, you’d think it was innocent enough. He said of course he couldn’t stop her but if she persisted he wouldn’t have a minute’s peace. He asked if she really wanted to load all this extra worry on to his shoulders. What about the fumes? he said. Weren’t there chemicals involved in that sort of thing? Simone rang up that same evening and said she wouldn’t be coming again. I think she’d been crying. She certainly sounded very subdued. I got the impression Alan was standing over her.”

“You didn’t attempt to persuade her differently?”

“Good heavens, no. What would have been the point?”

She was quite right, of course. No doubt any such approach would merely have made matters worse. “It’s some distance to High Wycombe, Miss Lawson.”

“About forty minutes.”

“So, adding up the sessions, that’s several hours you must have spent in Mrs. Hollingsworth’s company.”

“I suppose. Though, if you’re driving, most of your attention’s on the road.

“Did she tell you anything about her past life at all?” asked Barnaby. “Or discuss her marriage?”

“No to your first question. And all I know about the marriage is that she was bored. But then, I think Simone would be bored anywhere. Except perhaps in Harrods.”

“What did she talk about?”

“Oh, rubbishy articles she’d read in magazines. Her stars. What was happening in Brookside or EastEnders. All Greek to me as I don’t have a set.”

“No TV?” Troy gaped in astonishment. He had noticed the absence but assumed it was in her bedroom. He had never in his life met anyone who did not own a television.

“That’s right.” She turned to face them then, almost smiling. “I’m part of the one per cent.”

“So, what with one thing and another, you must have been quite relieved when she gave up?” Barnaby said.

“Well, I certainly had no objection. And there’s always a waiting list.”

He saw her loosen up. Her shoulders slackened, the planes of her face became less tautly defined. Barnaby got the impression that some precarious corner in the conversation had been safely turned. Or a minefield successfully negotiated. Was he being overly dramatic? It could be that she was simply getting accustomed to their presence.

“Was there anyone in the class that Mrs. Hollingsworth was especially friendly with?”

“They were mainly pensioners,” said Sarah. She added drily, “Not at all Simone’s cup of tea. She was pleasant enough to them, I suppose. But no, no real friends.” She sat down on one of the armchairs, her narrow, brown hands banded with many brilliant turquoise rings, loosely clasped.

Barnaby didn’t like this new composure at all though he found it hard to understand his resentment. After all, if there was no reason for her to feel guilty, why should she not appear calm? Perhaps it was simply that such a state of mind was not conducive to further revelations. He ought to ruffle things up again. Cast around for a remark or question that would really strike home. Difficult when you know next to nothing about your target. So, a shot in the dark it would have to be.

“Did you know he was violent, Hollingsworth?”

“What? To ... ?”

“To her, yes.”

“No, I didn’t.” Her fingers flew, touching her breast, as if to soothe a thudding heart. Her mouth shook. “I hate that sort of thing. Why women put up with ... God, how can ...”

Sergeant Troy, never averse to seeing others all of a twitch, especially when they so plainly regarded themselves as his superior, bit his lip to keep back a grin. Personally he had never hit a woman though it couldn’t be denied that they spent half their lives begging for it. Especially Maureen. He regarded this restraint as worthy of a medal.

Barnaby, pushing now, asked Sarah when she had last seen Alan Hollingsworth.

“One never ‘sees’ Alan. Just the car zooming in and out.”

“What about last Monday?”

“No. That was the night he ... ?”

“Died, yes. Were you at home?”

Sarah shook her head. “Not in the evening. I went to a film. Farinelli Il Castrato”

“Good, was it?” asked Sergeant Troy, thinking, bloody hell, we’ve got a right one here.

“The music was wonderful. Which was the reason I went.”

“Alone?”

“That’s right.”

“Where was it showing, Miss Lawson?” A page in the notebook rustled loose and was flipped over.

“The Curzon at Slough.” She looked at Sergeant Troy and then across to the Chief Inspector. “All these questions—you make it sound very serious.”

“An unexplained or suspicious death is always serious,” said Barnaby.

And there and then it happened. There had, after all, been a single undefused mine. Now, as they watched, she stepped on it. And fell apart. She uttered a sort of moan and clutched at her face savagely with her hands. Then keeled over, dropping first to her knees and then, face forward, on to the wooden boards.

“Get some water!”

As Troy ran to the kitchen, Barnaby knelt by the unconscious figure on the rug. But even as he attempted to take her pulse, Sarah Lawson started to come round.

“Sorry ...” Already she was struggling to get up. There were deep half-moon nail marks on her cheekbones.

“That’s all right, Miss Lawson. Take your time.” He gripped her left hand then, putting his other arm round her waist, helped her back into the chair. She felt very thin and light.

“Drink some of this.” Barnaby took the none too clean glass from Troy but she pushed it away, slopping the water over her faded blue skirt. Little crystal droplets settled on the velvet surface and rolled about.

“I don’t know what happened. I don’t usually ...”

“When did you last have something to eat?”

“I don’t remember. Thursday perhaps.”

Three days ago. “No wonder you’re fainting on us.”

Troy watched the old man bring, in every sense of the word, the woman round. Barnaby had many personas that he drew upon when conducting an interview and this one, everybody’s pet uncle, was the sergeant’s favourite. Listening to the soft, concerned comments, the suggestion that a friend or doctor should be contacted, Troy was lost in admiration. He acknowledged that it was not a technique he would ever be able to employ. He could not bear to be thought gullible. Or less intelligent than the person he was in conversation with, no matter how much of a simpleton that man or woman might be. It was a matter of pride. The chief, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. Whatever means were needed to winkle people out of their protective shells, those means would be brought into play.

Now he had stopped speaking and an atmosphere of persuasive calm took over the room. Into this pool of silence, as Barnaby had known she would, Sarah Lawson eventually voiced the real reason for her nervous collapse.

“I was surprised to hear you say that, about Alan. People in the village ... we all thought he had committed suicide. I mean, wasn’t there a note?”

“Not really,” said the Chief Inspector.

“I see.” She took a deep breath. You could see her, gathering both energy and wits together, as if for an affray. “Was it an accident then?”

“We’re in the middle of our investigations, Miss Lawson. I’m afraid I’m not able to discuss the matter in any sort of detail.” He wondered if she would be able to bring herself to take the next step and speak the unspeakable. The M word. So much more appalling, to the Chief Inspector’s way of thinking, than what is coyly called the F word, and yet bandied hither and yon in polite society, heard daily on Radio Four without a single squeak of complaint from Outraged, Tunbridge Wells, and printed on the spines of books in respectable libraries everywhere. Miss Lawson chickened out.

“Of course. I understand.”

He decided to leave it there. For now. A day or two to recover, to settle into the reassuring belief that she had seen the last of them, and he would have her brought into the station and find out precisely why she had fainted from emotion on discovering that Alan Hollingsworth had not died a natural death.

“That woman’s a dyke,” said Sergeant Troy as they made their way towards the car.

“Oh, yes?” Barnaby laughed. “How do you make that out?”

“Going out of her way to watch a movie where men’s todgers are chopped off.”

“Balls, not todgers.”

“Oh well,” said Sergeant Troy, attempting a little low-key irony of his own for once, “that’s all right then.”

Several hours later Barnaby, his face by now grey with fatigue though lightening by the minute, was in the kitchen at Arbury Crescent shaving thin curls of Parmesan from a large knobbly lump, holding the cheese steady with the palm of his hand and using a potato peeler.

He had a little grater described by his daughter as a “piss elegant Italian job”; a souvenir from Padua. However, though extremely smart in matt black and chrome, the top kept falling off and Barnaby had soon reverted to his old familiar ways.

In a square wooden bowl he had placed some young globe artichoke hearts, black olives, strips of red pepper and chunks of his neighbour’s home-grown Ailsa Craig tomatoes. Now he tore up the heart of a cos lettuce, cut some anchovies in half and added garlicky croissants, kept hot in an iron pan. Unwinding slowly, feeling his joints loosen, the tightness across his shoulders ease, little by little, he put Fawcett Green, the Hollingsworths, Penstemon et al from his mind. Gradually, over the years, he had become quite good at this. One had to survive.

Joyce had already prepared a vinaigrette with herbs from the garden, lemon juice and olive oil. She made salad dressing, toast and cups of tea and that, unless she was on her own and had only herself to please, was that.

Barnaby’s wife was a dreadful cook. Not dull or unadventurous; on the contrary, she had quite a bold, if rather haphazard, way with a chopping knife and an egg whisk. No, she simply had no gift for it. This in itself, of course, might not have mattered. Plenty of people with no talent for cooking manage to turn out perfectly edible meals. Some of them even earn a living at it. But Joyce was further handicapped in that her taste-buds seemed to have had some sort of bypass surgery early in their career. Her palate was, as you might say, tone deaf. She had once been memorably described, though not by him, as the Florence Foster Jenkins of the chafing dish.

He took a couple of glasses from the fridge, filled them with Montana McDonald Chardonnay and wandered into the conservatory. There, surrounded by ferns, grasses, orange and lemon trees and fluorescent blossoms the size of frisbees, Joyce reclined, like Titania, on a flowery bed.

“Oohh, lovely.” The Independent slid to the floor.

“Budge up then.” Barnaby gave his wife her drink and sat beside her on the bamboo sofa. He took a long, deep swallow of the wine which was truly marvellous: silky soft and smelling of melons and peaches.

“This is a bit of all right,” said Joyce.

Barnaby put down his glass, took hold of one of Joyce’s slender brown feet and started to stroke it gently. She watched him for a moment then sighed.

“They’re always the last to go, feet.”

“Don’t talk such rubbish. Nothing’s ‘gone,’ as you put it.”

This was only partly true. Her ankles were still slender, the skin on her burnished calves and plump upper arms remained unwrinkled, her curly mop of hair was still more brown than not. But the blurred line of her bottom jaw would soon become a double chin. Nose to mouth lines, barely sketched in a few years ago, were now engraved. Her eyelids drooped. She would be fifty in two weeks’ time. Where had the years gone?

“Will you still love me when I’m old and grey?”

“Good lord, no. I’m already planning a new life with Audrey.”

“Is that why you bought those polka-dot boxers?”

“We’re thinking of New South Wales.”

“Supposed to be very nice there.”

“Great grazing land. And a mighty fine place to raise youngsters.”

“Oh, Tom.” She caught his hand, pressed it to her cheek, against her lips. “Do I still look forty?”

“You’ve never looked forty, sweetheart.”

Barnaby sympathised with his wife’s gloomy apprehensions. Time was when birthdays had a proper sense of the order of things, strolling along at more or less regular yearly intervals. Now they turned up every other Thursday. Importuning, leering, tapping you on the shoulder. Best not look round.

“Come on, I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

He was starting to wonder whether new perfume was a good idea after all. Barnaby was keenly aware that, even after buying gifts for nearly thirty years for someone he knew better than anyone else in the world, he didn’t always get it right. Lack of time and, though he didn’t like to admit it, defective artistic vision were largely responsible.

Cully was something else. Even as a young child with very little money, his daughter had had the knack. She would scour charity and junk shops and, later, auction rooms, dress agencies and the posh sales, always coming up with the one thing that the grateful recipient vowed they could never live without.

One Christmas, aged eight, Cully had been with her father rootling through what he described as “a box of old rubbish” when she had found a soft leather bag, dark blue in the shape of a lotus. It had a broken zip and a long, frayed strap. Unable to dissuade her from spending twenty-five pence, he had then seen the rest of her money go on three brilliantly coloured feathered birds and some vivid crimson tissue which she had then made into paper roses. Nestling the birds inside the flowers, she had tucked the whole lot inside the lotus.

Joyce’s cries of delight had to be heard to be believed. The birds were still perched on a house plant in the spare bedroom. The lotus eventually disintegrated after years of constant use as a peg bag. Her husband’s gift of an expensive cardigan with a snowflake design had hardly seen the light of day.

As they wandered into the dining room she said, “Will you be here on Tuesday evening, Tom? Cully’s coming over to pick up the movie we taped.”

“I thought she’d changed her mind about watching it.”

“She’s still not sure.”

Their daughter was about to start rehearsals for a revival of Pam Gem’s play The Blue Angel at the Haymarket. The 1930s film had recently been on television and, the Bradleys’ video being on the blink, Joyce had done the honours.

“So, will you?”

“I shouldn’t bank on it.”

“But you’ll try?”

They sat down, talking about their only child. About her career; flourishing. And her marriage; still in existence but, according to her father, hanging by a thread.

Joyce was more optimistic, believing that outsiders—and especially parents—never really know exactly what’s going on. It was true there had been plenty of friction. The last splendid display ended with a Coupe Jacques whizzing across a table at La Caprice and a month’s trial parting.

The reconciliation, just as melodramatically staged and verbally inventive, took place on the roof garden of their Ladbroke Grove flat. It brought out half of Oxford Gardens who, when the champagne was finally broached, spontaneously broke into loud applause.

“Actors,” murmured Joyce, and turned her attention to the meal.

Cold lemon and tarragon chicken with Jersey mids. Followed by the salad, a fruity piece of Mimolette and a dish of golden Mirabelles. Barnaby was reaching out for some more potatoes.

“You can’t have those and French bread. And cheese.”

“I’m having second thoughts about all this dieting.”

“Put them aside, Tom. The doctor said—”

“I’m beginning to wonder if excess weight is really harmful at all. I think it’s a canard put about by the manufacturers of slimming products and all those loathsome magazines.”

“You know very well—”

“The words ‘low fat’ should be stricken from the English language.” He tucked in. “I shall become more relaxed about this whole food thing. Let it all hang out.”

“Sergeant Brierley won’t like that.”

“Seems to work for Gerard Depardieu.”

“Gerard Depardieu’s French.”

Having run amiably through this not entirely unfamiliar routine, the Barnabys finished eating in a comfortable silence. They had coffee in the garden, sitting on a bench in the rose arbour. The twilight air was heavy with perfume. A Himalayan musk rose clambered above their heads.

In the dusk the trees and shrubs were that strange steely colour, not quite blue, green or grey, which, if seen in the sky, would indicate a coming storm. Already their outlines were indistinct as they merged into dark clumps. The sky was thick with pale stars.

The birds were quiet but, three or four houses away, someone was playing a piano. Satie, the third Gymnopédie. Stumbling through it, repeating a phrase over and over again. Rather than breaking, it emphasised the silence.

Barnaby put his coffee cup on the grass and his arm round his wife. He kissed her cheek, her lips. Joyce relaxed against him, slipping her hand in his.

In the house the telephone rang. Barnaby cursed.

“Don’t answer it.”

“Joycey ...”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“It might not be the station.”

“With that timing?”

“At least we’ve eaten.” The words were called over Barnaby’s shoulder as he strode across the lawn.

Joyce gathered up the cups and followed more slowly. When she came into the sitting room he was already putting on his jacket. Half a lifetime of moments like this did not make them any easier.

“I suppose we should be grateful it isn’t Saturday week. We might have all been rollicking around singing ‘Happy—’ ”

He turned aside but not before she had seen the expression on his face. Immediately Joyce’s whole demeanour changed.

“It’s something terrible, isn’t it, Tom?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What’s happened?”

“They’ve found a woman’s body.”

“Oh God. Do you think it’s—”

“How the hell should I know who it is?” It was quicker that way. But lying made him even more irritable. He moved into the hall, scrabbling in his pocket for the car keys and shouted, “Don’t wait up.”