The Killings at Badger's Drift

Chapter One

Barbara Lessiter approached the cheval-glass in the corner of her bedroom. She had switched off all the lights with one exception, the ivory figurine by her bed. The light from this filtered through an apricot shade, casting a warm glow over her shimmering nightdress and brown, solarium-toasted skin. Little peaks of strawberry-scented mousse-like cream trembled on the tips of her fingers. She started to stroke her throat from the hollow at the base to the point of her chin, rhythmically, closing her eyes and smiling. Then, using both hands and more mousse she tapped all over her face. Oil for her eyes came last. French, forty-five pounds a pot, and it went nowhere.

She loved this ritual. Even as a young girl, years before it had been necessary, she had massaged and patted and knuckled and stroked with voluptuous satisfaction. It was hardly necessary even now, she told herself, secure in the light from the shaded lamp.

After she had finished her face she brushed her hair: fifty strokes from the crown to the tip. Glowing reddish-brown hair as rich and glossy as henna and egg yolks and conditioners could make it. She tossed her head back and smiled.

The movement caused a strap to slip from her shoulder. She came closer to the glass, touched her naked breast, touched the tiny purplish red bruises and smiled again, a smile of greedy reminiscence. Then she stood very still, listening.

Someone was approaching her door. She held her breath. There was a knock. It sounded tentative, almost apologetic. She waited, covering up her bare skin as if the door had been transparent. After a minute or two the slippered footsteps moved away. She breathed out, a long sated exhalation. She must let him in next time. It had been simply ages. And he’d been very good, considering. But God - what a contrast it would be ...

She’d been born Barbara Wheeler in Uxbridge ‘some time in the late fifties’, she told people with coy deceit. Her father was a ganger on the railway, her mother a household drudge. They had five other children. Only Barbara was beautiful. They were packed into a terraced house flush to the pavement, with a concrete back yard. She shared a bedroom with two sisters, now household drudges themselves, defending her space and belongings with tigerish possessiveness. She had scorned their cheap clothes and cosmetics, holding her nose when they sprayed on their Californian Poppy from Woolworth’s. She started stealing at fifteen - creams, perfumes and lotions, peeling off the price labels, knowing that no one at home would ever have heard of the brands.

After her sisters had been consumed into the local sweet factory she got a job as a filing clerk in a solicitor’s office and, it seemed to her, a precarious toehold on the slippery slope that would lead her out of a slummish and ugly environment into the glossy perfection of middle-class life. A world where you didn’t have to go to a park filled with screaming kids and snapping dogs to enjoy grass and trees but had them actually belonging to you, in your own garden. Where people washed their clothes before they looked dirty and men shook hands when they met whilst women brushed powdered cheek against powdered cheek in easy, meaningless display.

Barbara was not especially intelligent but she was shrewd and worked hard and quietly, keeping her mouth shut and her eyes alert. She started to take clothes from one of the larger department stores in Slough - choosing, as nearly as she could, styles resembling those worn by the elder partner’s young married daughter. This stage of affairs continued until she was almost eighteen. She was still a virgin, partially because she’d never met anyone she fancied enough but mostly because she had some vague extravagant idea that to be able to offer virginity to a serious suitor might cancel out the debit of her shabby beginnings. She never mentioned them of course, but was constantly nervous in case the easy, upper-class patronage that she encountered in the office would somehow flush them to the surface.

Alan Cater, newly articled to the firm, started work there on her eighteenth birthday. He was tall, fair, had sharp blue eyes and smoked slim brown cigars. He had a red Cobra sports car and a watch that was the slimmest wafer of gold. He smiled a lot, especially at Barbara. He touched her too, only casually, nothing you could take offence at: a hand on her shoulder, an arm around her waist at the filing cabinet. She was rather shocked at the surge of pleasurable excitement she felt when he did this but said nothing, not realizing that her quickened breath and flushed skin gave her away.

One evening in midsummer he was late leaving the office. He was playing tennis straight from work and had gone into the cloakroom to change. Barbara never left before he did. She had graduated to dicta-typing, taking lessons in the evening, and was covering her machine when he came out in brief shorts and a white Aertex shirt. Everyone else had gone. He had stood looking at her for a long moment, first at her face, then everywhere else. Then he locked the door and told her he had been longing for this moment. Barbara had felt sick with excitement. He stood very close to her, said, ‘Shall I show you what you do to me?’ and guided her hand. As he opened her blouse, in the moments before she was completely swept away, Barbara saw them framed in the doorway of an old country church, herself in white of course, Alan in morning suit. There would be champagne afterwards and a three-tier cake, with some kept back for the christening.

‘You’re a lovely girl, darling.’ He unhooked her bra. ‘Come on - what’s the matter? You’re not going to pretend you’re surprised?’

‘My legs seem to be giving way ...’

‘That’s soon solved. There’s a settee in old Rupert’s office. And a mirror.’

They walked there, arms entwined, leaving her blouse and brassiere on the typewriter. They lay on the settee facing the mirror and a net-curtained window looking on to the street. When she was quite naked Alan threatened to pull the nets back. This, which should have alarmed her, made her even more excited. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. It hardly hurt at all, not like people said it did, it just seemed to be over so quickly. She wanted more and he gave her more. After an hour someone knocked at the outer door and he smiled, touching her lips with his finger. She was sitting straddled across his knees and saw a girl in a white tennis dress, her long hair tied back with a scarf, walk past the window. It was nearly nine o’clock when they finally left.

After this they met often, usually quite late in the evening, Alan explaining that he had to catch up with his studies first. He would drive out into the green belt and find a secluded spot or, if the weather was bad, they would use his car. She never took him to her tiny bedsitter and had already told him (to save awkward questions at invitation time) that she was an orphan. On the evenings they didn’t meet she was restless, consumed with longing. He treated her very professionally in the office, occasionally winking at her when the coast was clear. Once, when they had been briefly alone, he had stood behind her chair and slipped his hand down her shirt.

Halfway through the winter she discovered she was pregnant. She had felt slightly anxious when telling him, as if it had been all her fault. She ended her confession by asking what his parents would say. He had looked disbelieving, incredulous and then amused for a moment, then given her a casual hug before saying, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort something out.’

At the end of the week Rupert Winstanley had called her into his office and given her the address of a private clinic in Saint John’s Wood and a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds. She had never seen any of them again.

She had had the abortion, being too distressed and lonely to work out an alternative. She wouldn’t now, of course. She’d drain the buggers dry. If she couldn’t get their respect or admiration or love she’d make bloody sure she got their money.

She’d been home from the clinic about a month and working as a shelf filler at Sainsbury’s when someone knocked at her door late one night. She opened it a crack. A man stood there smelling faintly of cologne and, more strongly, of beer. He wore a blazer with a badge, striped tie and grey flannels. He said, ‘Hu ... l ... l .. o ...’ and eyed her up and down.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m a friend of Alan’s, actually. He thought we might ... you know ... get on ...’

She slammed the door. Rage and pain and disgust boiled up in her. She stood very still as if moving might wound. The bastard! The pain ebbed away; the disgust rushed down the conduit of memory, redirected at Alan and his kind. Only the rage remained. She listened. No footsteps. He must be still there. She reopened the door. He gave her a sloppy smile.

She said, ‘It’ll cost you.’ She watched the beery complacency slip a bit, and thought, so wrap that in your old school tie and stuff it.

‘Oh ... um ... all right ...’ He made as if to step into the room. She put her foot in the gap. ‘How much have you got?’

He fumbled with his wallet, pulling out notes, a driving licence, a child’s photograph. ‘Fifty pounds ...’

Nearly a month’s wages. She opened the door wide. ‘You’d better come in then, hadn’t you?’

And so it had gone. Recommendations. A friend of a friend. She’d never actually been without anyone. On the other hand she’d never really felt secure. The rent was always paid. She’d had some presents. Some very nice presents. A wolf coat from Harrod’s, a vast colour telly, a holiday in Portofino when the man’s wife was having a hysterectomy. But no security. No financial security, that is. Emotional security she had. None of them touched her. She would look down at them, as if from some high vantage point, huffing and puffing like saggy, impotent sea lions, and despise them all. She would never again let herself feel that sweeping golden rush of pleasure that had carried her so completely from the shores of sanity in the offices of Winstanley, Dennison and Winstanley over twenty years before. She couldn’t even remember Alan’s second name let alone his face.

And then she had met Trevor Lessiter. She had bumped into him, literally, in the food department at Marks and Spencers. Turning a corner in one of the aisles too sharply, their trolleys had locked antler-like in a metal clinch. She had immediately flashed him a radiant professional smile. He had been bowled over by the radiance and had quite missed the professionalism.

He was a funny little man with a round head, pepper and salt hair and a woolly scarf although it was quite a warm day. Expensive clothes, she thought, running a knowledgeable eye over his appearance, boringly old fashioned of course. The sort of man who carries his change in a purse. They pushed their trolleys round together. His was already over half full.

‘Your wife must have given you a very long list.’

‘No ... that is ...’ he stammered, looking at her quickly then back to the shelves. ‘It’s my daughter’s list ... I’m a widower.’

With hardly a break in her step she said, ‘Oh - how thoughtless ... I just didn’t ...’ She stopped walking then and looked straight at him. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

They went for tea at a café over the Odeon. Barbara excused herself as soon as they were settled and retired to the Ladies’ where she removed one set of false eyelashes and half her lipstick, and put on some more scent. They met for tea again, then dinner at a hotel on the bank of the Thames at Marlow. They drove down in his beautiful old Jaguar. The doors clunked when they closed and it had real leather seats. At the hotel there were candles in glasses and flowers floating in glass bowls. She was used to dining in out-of-the-way places, but not with men who didn’t keep looking over their shoulders. He told her about his wife’s accident and about his daughter. He said, ‘I’d like you to meet her.’

This took some time to arrange. Weekends came and went and Judy always appeared to have something on. However eventually, at her father’s insistence, a Sunday afternoon was set aside. Barbara dressed very carefully: a soft paisley dress and a light tweed coat. Hardly any makeup: just blusher, bronzer, soft lipstick and a light brown eye pencil.

The village was nearly thirty miles from Slough (thank God, she thought) and as they drove along she kept saying prettily, and only half falsely, ‘I do hope she’ll like me.’

And he, obtuse and self-deluding, said, ‘Of course she’ll like you. Why on earth shouldn’t she?’

When he turned the car into the drive she thought at first that there must be some mistake. That he was calling on a wealthy patient or dropping in on some friends before taking her home. Lawns swept each side of the drive. There were trees and shrubs and flowerbeds. The house was a large Victorian villa with a turret and gables and (she discovered later) seven bedrooms. She felt cold as she got out of the car. Cold with longing and hope and fear.

She said, ‘This reminds me of my father’s house.’

‘Oh. Where was that, dear?’ She had never before mentioned her family.

‘In Scotland. It went, I’m afraid, like everything else.’ She looked up at the many windows and gave a heavy sigh, pulsating with remembrance and loss. ‘He was a terrible gambler.’

‘I hope you’ll -’ He checked himself. Barbara knew what he’d been going to say and cursed the unseen girl in the house. She had never got on well with women, never had a close woman friend. Well - she’d just have to play it as it came.

It came as an absolute disaster. The daughter had sat, lumpen and disapproving (that was my mother’s favourite chair), dispensing tea and heavy damp wodges of home-made cake. Barbara tried to make conversation, the daughter either didn’t reply or spoke only of times gone by when Mummy did this or Mummy did that or we all went ...

Meanwhile Barbara looked around at the chintz-covered puffy sofas (two) and armchairs (five). At the bowls of flowers and washed Chinese rugs and beautiful mirrors and ornaments. And through the french windows a flagged terrace with urns of brilliant flowers leading to the shaven, incandescently green lawn, and prayed for the first time in years: Oh God - please make him ask me. She realized she was gripping the handle of her delicate cup with unnatural force and set it down very carefully.

Driving back in the car, he had said, ‘She’ll come round.’ She wouldn’t of course, thought Barbara. That sort never did. Frigid little bitch. With that granular complexion and a bum that nearly touched the ground. A born spinster. She’d be there looking after Daddy when she was ninety, never mind nineteen.

‘Oh - do you think so, Trevor? I was so looking forward to meeting her.’ Her voice shook a little. As he parked outside her flat she said, ‘Would you mind coming in for a moment? I feel a bit down.’ It was the first time she had issued such an invitation. He bounded eagerly out of the car and up the steps.

The flat was in Mancetta Road over a newsagent’s in the centre of the town. She didn’t offer him anything to drink, just flung her coat over a chair and slumped on the mock ocelot sofa, burying her face in her hands. Immediately he was beside her.

‘Don’t be upset.’ He put a lumpy tweed arm around her shoulders. She turned to him, childlike in her sorrow.

‘I wanted her so much to like me. I pictured us talking about clothes and makeup and things ... I thought I could look after her ... after both of you ... I suppose you think that’s silly?’

‘Darling, of course not.’ He suddenly became very conscious of the heaviness of her breasts, pressing into his shirt front. And the scent of her hair. He raised her chin and was touched to see tears in her eyes. He kissed her. For a moment her mouth parted eagerly under his, he even felt the tip of her tongue, then she gasped and pushed him away. She got up and crossed the room, turning to face him. She was panting.

‘What must you think? Oh - Trevor. I don’t know what it is ... you’re in my thoughts all the time ... I should never have asked you up here.’

Then she was in his arms again. For a moment she let her whole body relax and press against his, noting that at least he was going to be able to do it when the time came. Another long kiss. His hand moved. She allowed herself one little cry of excitement before breaking away. ‘What do you think you’re -’

‘Barbara ... I’m sorry -’

‘What sort of woman do you think I am?’

‘Forgive me, darling ... please ...’

‘Just because I love you - yes I admit it! I love you. Oh Trevor’ - she started to cry again - ‘you must go. It’s all so hopeless.’

He went and was back again the next day. And the next. For three weeks he visited, agonized, tumefied, was refused entry, subsided, begged, pleaded, squirmed and writhed. The day he cracked, Barbara had been feeling so unhappy that she had not even bothered to dress and was sitting by the gas fire wearing an edge-to-edge peignoir.

They were married on the morning of 30 June 1982. The night before the wedding he stayed in the flat, experiencing transports of delight which he was to remember, with an increasing degree of resentful yearning, for the rest of his life. Then they drove off to Badger’s Drift to break the news to Judy.

And now - Barbara let the strap slip and studied the bite again - she was putting it all at risk. A mixture of frustration and boredom had led her to take a lover. And what a lover. Only a few hours since they had parted, and she already wanted him again. For the second time she had slipped out along the golden stream. Her body felt things she hadn’t allowed it to feel for years. She had been very, very careful, but for how long could the affair stay concealed? Yet she couldn’t stop. He was as necessary to her now as breathing. She got into bed and lay for a moment experiencing again in memory the rhythmical movements of love, then slid into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Two

The cordoning of Miss Simpson’s cottage caused more interest than a whole platoon of Sergeant Troys. Half the village seemed to be out, ignoring the patently untruthful statement from an attendant constable that there was nothing to see.

The scene-of-crime men worked deftly and methodically through the whole house. Barnaby wandered about, went into the garden. The bereaved bees thrummed in their hive. He noticed without surprise that any unplanted ground was already full of weeds. He returned to the back door and the sweet scented arch of the Kiftsgate rose.

‘We found this under some laurels near the larder window, sir.’ Barnaby was shown a garden fork already labelled and in its polythene bag. ‘Probably been used to fork over any prints. Somebody’s certainly been out that way.’

By lunchtime the men had finished. A car left, taking information obtained to the forensic laboratories, the cordons were removed and the team repaired to the Black Boy for beer and sandwiches. Half an hour later they drove out of the village to the beechwood. Most of the crowd had by then given up, but Barnaby heard a woman on the pub forecourt say, ‘Run home, Robbie, and tell your mam they’re going down the lane.’ A small boy shot off and, shortly after they had parked on a layby near the beechwood, another interested group had arrived.

In the woods the cordons enclosed a very large area. The scene-of-crime officers plotted it out, taking sections at a time for a fingertip search. Barnaby described his own movements and those of Miss Bellringer. The watchers pressed eagerly against the ropes, craning their necks. A man ducked underneath, saying, ‘It’s a free country, you know - we’re not in Russia yet,’ and was ordered back. A large woman with a golden retriever called: ‘I’m sure Henry could help.’

Barnaby watched and kept out of the way. He realized he was becoming impatient. These things could not be hurried, but so much time was going by. Another day for the reports to come through. He had the feeling that everything was turning to dust in his hands before he’d even started. He beckoned to Sergeant Troy and hurried back to the car.

In fact it took less than twenty-four hours. Forensic never closed (except on bank holidays) and Barnaby had the scene-of-crime reports in his hands before lunchtime the following day. He read them through carefully and now sat facing a row of alert faces in one of the station’s interview rooms.

‘What we’re trying to discover’ - he swallowed his first tablet of the day with the remains of his coffee - ‘is the whereabouts of all the inhabitants of the village, including any children who were not at school on the afternoon of the seventeenth, and also for that same evening - all right? There’s a stack of pro-formas on the table over there. Allocation of addresses on the board outside.’

‘At what point do we assume the afternoon to end, sir?’ asked Sergeant Troy, who had already forgotten his earlier animadversions and was anxious to shine. ‘Did anyone see her come back from the woods for instance?’

Barnaby looked at his sergeant. He had been quite aware of the man’s previous unspoken scepticism and wondered at the ease with which attitudes and beliefs which proved inconvenient were sloughed as naturally as a snake’s skin. He knew nothing of Troy’s private life but suspected that relationships might be handled with the same insouciance.

‘Well of course that would be very handy, but life is rarely so obliging. I think it would be best at this stage if you take the time in one block, from two p.m. to midnight. We know that Miss Simpson was alive at eight o’clock because she made a telephone call.’

‘This person or people that she’s supposed to have seen,’ asked a young policewoman, ‘how do we know they’re from the village at all?’

‘We don’t for sure, but it was certainly someone she knew, and no car parked on the verges anywhere near the field which leads to the woods. And the only other place to park, the layby in Church Lane, is clearly visible from the last house. The owner was in his garden most of the afternoon and is quite convinced he saw no car. This means whoever it was walked there.’

‘So we’re looking for someone who doesn’t have an alibi for part of the afternoon and some of the evening?’

‘Probably. I’m inclined to believe a couple are involved. The report shows that a rug, a Black Watch tartan, had been laid on the ground.’ He watched Troy give Policewoman Brierley a lewd wink and a nudge so sharp that she dropped her pencil. ‘Also other bracken and plants outside the actual area where the rug was placed show signs of bruising which seems to indicate that it may be a favourite spot. One that the couple have used several times before.’

‘Seems a bit incredible, sir.’ Troy again. ‘I mean that she could have been killed because she saw someone having it -’ He cleared his throat. ‘A bit old fashioned. We’re in 1987 after all. Who expects fidelity these days?’

Barnaby, who had never been unfaithful in his life, said, ‘You’d be surprised. People can still be divorced for adultery. Disinherited. Relationships can be ruined. Trust destroyed.’ There were a lot of blank looks and one or two understanding nods. He got up. ‘On your way then.’

‘Handy they were seen in the afternoon, sir. So many people at work then, it’ll make elimination easier.’

‘We don’t know when they were seen. It could have been seven o’clock. It’s still light then.’

‘Oh.’ Troy drove carefully, keeping an eye on the speedometer. ‘They could’ve walked over from Gessler Tye. It’s not all that far. Get off their own manor.’

‘Yes. We may have to spread out a bit.’

‘Course even if it was a couple it doesn’t mean they’re both in it.’

That thought had already occurred to Barnaby. It was more than likely that one half of the couple was fancy free, with nothing to lose by discovery. It was also likely that, even if both had partners, only one had so much to lose that he or she would be prepared to kill rather than have the liaison exposed. And the loss need not necessarily be a financial one. Barnaby did not discount the possibility that Miss Simpson had been killed to avoid causing anguish to someone’s legitimate partner. It was after all quite possible to love one’s spouse dearly and still not be able to resist a roll in the hay. They entered Badger’s Drift, passing two police cars already parked by the Black Boy. The house-to-house was under way.

Barnaby said, ‘I shall be starting at the Lessiters’. That big house with the lions.’

Sergeant Troy gave a low envious whistle as he crunched up the drive and let himself go a bit by the front door, parking in a showy swirl of dust and gravel. Barnaby sighed and climbed out. He used the mock ancient knocker and, whilst waiting, studied the carriage lamps and a board, with an arrow pointing sideways, giving the doctor’s surgery hours in Gothic, horror-movie script.

Barnaby was getting to know the surgery rather well. He had visited it again the previous day to inform the doctor of the post-mortem findings. The news had not been well received. Trevor Lessiter had looked at him incredulously, saying, much as George Bullard had done, ‘Hemlock?’ and dropped like a stone into his chair. He then so far forgot himself as to indicate to Barnaby that he should also be seated. Even his fingers were temporarily stilled.

‘And what put you on to that if I’m not being too inquisitive?’ Already he was on the defensive.

‘We were asked to look into the matter.’

‘Who by? That loopy old hag down the lane, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He noticed Barnaby’s slight change of expression and made a visible effort to calm down. ‘It would have been courteous of you to let me know.’

‘We are letting you know, sir.’

‘I mean before this, as I’m sure you damn well realize.’

Approaching footsteps recalled Barnaby to the present. A girl opened the door. Remembering Doctor Bullard’s description of a ‘not so scrumptious’ daughter, Barnaby immediately assumed that this must be she: short, not much over five feet, and dumpy. Her complexion had a thick, soupy texture and there was a fuzz of down on her top lip, her hair was coarse but full of vitality, springing up into a wiry halo around her head. She had large, rather beautiful hazel eyes which she blinked rapidly from time to time. This habit gave her a timorous yet slightly defiant demeanour: the sort of girl who made a career out of being insecure.

Barnaby stated their business and was admitted. He followed Judy Lessiter across the hall. Her legs, emerging from a shapeless pinafore dress, were really remarkable: hugely wide at the knees then tapering off into sparrow-thin ankles, like upended skittles. She pushed at the sitting-room door and went in, Barnaby close behind.

Doctor Lessiter looked up, then flung his Telegraph down with some annoyance. ‘Good grief - I thought I’d seen the last of you lot.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, but this sort of inquiry is quite usual -’

‘Turning the whole village upside down.’

‘In the case of an unexplained death -’

‘The woman picked some hemlock by mistake. There’s a large field of it just beyond Church Lane. The seeds blow everywhere. Obviously some went into the garden and took root. I’ve never known such a palaver.’

‘We are asking everyone in the village to account for their movements on the day in question. That is last Friday the seventeenth of July, afternoon and evening.’

The doctor gave an irritated little snort, threw his paper down and stood with his back to them, staring into the fireplace. ‘Well ... if we must. On my rounds in the afternoons ... then in the even—’

‘Your rounds are Tuesday and Thursday, Daddy.’ Judy’s tone was calm and reasonable but Barnaby thought he detected a rather unpleasant smile plucking the corners of her mouth.

‘What? Oh ... yes ... sorry.’ He picked up a magazine from the log basket and started to flick through it, illustrating his lack of concern. ‘I was here, of course. Bit of gardening but mainly watching the final Test. What a game that was ... superb bowling ...’

‘And the evening?’

‘Still there, I’m afraid. A dull day really.’

‘And your wife was with you on both of these occasions?’

‘Part of the evening. She was shopping in the afternoon.’

‘Thank you. Miss Lessiter?’

‘I was working during the day. I’m a librarian. At Pinner.’

‘And in the evening?’

‘... here ...’

Both policemen noticed the rather theatrical start of surprise the doctor gave at this remark, as no doubt they were meant to. Tit for tat, thought Barnaby.

‘Well ...’ she elaborated, ‘I did go out for a bit of a walk ... it was such lovely weather.’

‘Do you remember what time that was?’

‘Sorry, no. I wasn’t out long.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Just down Church Lane, past the fields for about half a mile, then back.’

‘Did you meet anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear or notice anything out of the ordinary when you were passing Beehive Cottage?’

‘No ... I think the curtains were closed.’

‘And what time did you return?’

She gave a couldn’t-care-less shrug.

‘Can you be of any help here, Doctor Lessiter?’ asked Barnaby.

‘No.’ The doctor had returned to the settee and reimmersed himself in his newspaper. Barnaby was just about to ask if he could see Mrs Lessiter when she appeared in the doorway behind him. He was made aware of this by a sudden change in the atmosphere. The doctor, after a glance over Barnaby’s shoulder, started reading his paper with a degree of intensity which could only be feigned, Judy glowered at no one in particular and the blood heated up and zipped around under Sergeant Troy’s almost transparent skin, staining it an unbecoming bright pink.

‘I thought I heard voices.’

She dropped into the armchair by the window, put her feet up on a tiny footstool and smiled at the two policemen. She could have stepped straight out of one of his centrefolds, Troy thought, eyeing the ripe curves pressing against a terry-towelling jump suit, the tumbling hair and glossy fondant lips. Her slender tanned feet were in high-heeled golden sandals. Barnaby thought she was not as young as all that hard work and hard cash would have you believe. Not early thirties but mid, maybe even late forties.

In reply to his question she said that in the afternoon she had been in Causton shopping and in the evening she was at home except for a short period when she had gone out for a drive.

‘Was that for any special purpose?’

‘No ... well ... to be honest we’d had a little tiff, hadn’t we, Pookie?’

‘I hardly think our domestic squabbles are of any interest to the police, my dear -’

‘I overspent my dress allowance and he got cross so I took the Jaguar and drove around for a bit till I thought he’d’ve cooled down. Then I came home.’

‘And this was?’

‘Was Miss Lessiter here when you returned?’

‘Judy?’ She frowned at the girl in an impersonal way, as if wondering what she was doing in the place at all. ‘I’ve no idea. She spends a lot of time in her room. Adolescents do, you know.’

Barnaby could not think of the figure now lumpily taking up half a settee as an adolescent. The word implied not just a lack of confidence, ungainliness and a personality in a state of flux but fragility (if only of the ego) and youth. Judy Lessiter looked as if she had been born middle aged.

‘You didn’t stop anywhere, Mrs Lessiter? For a drink perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Well, thank you.’ As Barnaby rose he heard the flap of the letter box. Judy heaved herself up from the sofa and lolloped out of the room. Her stepmother glanced at Barnaby.

‘She’s in love. Every time the post arrives or the phone rings we get a touch of drama.’ Her shiny unkind smile included all three men. It said: isn’t she ridiculous? As if anyone would. ‘A dreadful man too, but devastatingly attractive, which makes things worse.’

Trevor Lessiter’s knuckles whitened over the newsprint. Judy returned with a handful of letters. She threw one into Barbara’s lap and dropped the rest down the inside of the Daily Telegraph chute. Her father clicked his tongue with annoyance.

When they left the house Barnaby stopped to admire a spectacular Madame le Coultre clematis climbing up the portico. Before he walked on he looked back through the window of the room they had just left. Barbara Lessiter, standing now, was staring out unseeingly into the garden. Her face was a mask of fear. As Barnaby watched she crumpled a letter into a tight ball and thrust it into the pocket of her suit.

‘What’s the matter, Stepmamma?’

‘Nothing.’ Barbara moved back to the armchair. She was longing for some strong black coffee. Everything was on a low table in front of the sofa. But she wouldn’t trust her shaking hands.

‘You’re white as the proverbial sheet under all that plaster of Paris.’ Judy stared at the older woman. ‘You’re not pregnant are you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not,’ echoed Judy. ‘You’re well past it, aren’t you?’

‘Have you got a cigarette, Trevor?’

Her husband, not looking up from his paper, replied, ‘There’s some in a box on my writing desk.’

Barbara took one, tapping it so furiously on the lid it almost snapped. She lit it with a silver football and stood smoking at the window, her back to them. The silence, packed with unspoken animosities, lengthened.

Judy Lessiter directed her burning gaze at her father’s paper shield. She would have liked to burn straight through it like a magnified ray from the sun. To see it brown and blacken and flake away, leaving a hole for his stupid astonished face to peer through.

It was now five years since that shattering day when they had both turned up on the doorstep with matching gold bands. He had been away from home the night before, telling her he was at the bedside of a dying patient. She had been unable to forgive him for this lie which she felt was utterly despicable. She wasn’t even sure if she still loved him. Certainly her pleasure in observing his day-to-day discomfiture augured strongly against it.

From the very first she had resisted strongly Barbara’s rather half-hearted suggestions about clothes and makeup and alterations to her room. She liked her room the way it had always been - old toys, patchwork quilt, school books and all - and found Barbara’s suggestions on how to make it more feminine (ruffled curtains, soppy Pierrot wallpaper and oyster shag-pile carpet) quite nauseating. She was also, she told herself, far too intelligent to be taken in by the stupid magazines Barbara spent half her life reading. As if a new you could be found by starving the old you half to death then tearing the eyebrows out of what was left. But the motherly advice hadn’t lasted long and Barbara had soon slipped into the daily routine that had continued ever since. Giving orders to the daily help, visiting her hairdresser, health club and dress shops and lying about the house studying what Judy called ‘Harpies Bizarre and other gorgoneia’.

Judy was not happy. She had not been happy since the day her mother died. Not, that is, in the fearless uncomplicated way an only child of two loving parents is happy. But the unhappiness of the other two gave her a curious sort of comfort. And then there was Michael Lacey. Or rather there wasn’t. And would never be. That was something she would have to keep repeating every time the little worm of hope wriggled in her heart. Not only because of his looks (even after the accident he still had the most wonderful face) but because of his work. A painter must be free. Only last week he told her he was going to travel; to study in Venice, Florence and Spain. Full of anguish she had cried, ‘When, when!’ but he had simply shrugged, saying, ‘One day ... soon.’ Since her engagement his sister Katherine was hardly ever at home and Judy walked over to the cottage sometimes, cleaned up a bit, made some coffee. Not too often. She tried to space her visits widely with the secret hope that he might start to miss her.

Two weeks ago he had taken her arm and led her over to a window. He had held her chin and studied her face, then said, ‘I’d like to paint you. You have amazing eyes.’ He had spoken almost clinically, as if he were a sculptor and she a promising lump of stone, but Judy’s heart had melted in her breast (A New You!) and her dreams, refurbished, gained in strength. He hadn’t mentioned it again. She had walked over a few evenings ago, seen through the window that he was working and, lacking the courage to disturb him, crept quietly away. She had not returned, afraid that an unwanted visit might try his patience and bring about what she dreaded most of all, a definite dismissal.

Trevor Lessiter watched his daughter, miles away as usual, as he folded up his Telegraph. He wondered what she was thinking and how it was possible to miss someone so much when you saw them every day. He was glad she had not been driven, despite his wife’s heavy hints, to find a flat in Pinner ‘to be nearer work’. Judy did nothing now in the house. She who had always taken such a pride in polishing her mother’s things and arranging flowers. Now whatever Mrs Holland couldn’t manage got left. And whenever he and Barbara bickered (nearly all the time lately, it seemed), he saw a relish in Judy’s eyes which he found deeply wounding. He knew she was thinking ‘serve him right’. He looked at his wife, at the heavy breasts and narrow waist, and felt dizzy with lust. Not love. He recognized now that he no longer loved her, indeed wondered if he ever had, but she still had the power. So much power. If only he could talk to Judy. Try to make her understand how he had been driven, almost tricked, into marriage. Surely now she was herself in love she would understand. But he shrank from such an attempt. Young people were invariably disturbed, even offended, by revelations of their parents’ sexuality. And her persistent indifference and unkindness were now provoking a similar reaction in him. Something he would not have believed possible a few years ago.

He remembered how, after her mother died, she would wait up for him to return from a night call and heat up some Ovaltine, then sit with him to make sure he drank it. She took all his messages neatly and accurately and listened to his patients rambling on with as much kindness as his wife would have shown. Looking across at her sad sulky face, it seemed to him that he had thrown away something of unique worth and replaced it with shoddy.

Barbara Lessiter felt the hard paper ball pressing on her thigh when she moved. She wondered, for the millionth time in the last five minutes, where the hell she was going to find five thousand pounds.

Chapter Three

‘Where to now, sir?’

‘Well, there’s Mrs Quine in Burnham Crescent ...’

‘I thought the others were doing the council houses.’

‘I’m doing that one, she’s Miss Simpson’s cleaner. Then there’s that alarmingly smart bungalow and the next four cottages - and Trace’s farm. Or rather, Tye House.’

‘Expect to see a bit of rank, do they? Top people?’

‘I can do without the mass observation, Troy. Just keep your wits about you and your eyes open.’

‘Right, Chief.’

‘And your pencil sharp. We’ll start with the farmhouse and work down.’

There was a graceful iron white-ribbed fanlight with lacy curlicues over the main door. The magnolia was in fulsome bloom, great waxy cups in dark green saucers pressing against the windows. Sergeant Troy gave the brass pull a yank and, a long way away, a bell could be heard tinkling. Barnaby wondered if they had a glass and mahogany case in the kitchen with a row of little bells jerking imperiously under their designations. Breakfast Room. Laundry. Still Room. Nursery. No one came.

‘Must be the maid’s day off.’ Troy was unable to sustain the jokey note. The remark came out as a sour sneer. He followed Barnaby round the side of the house, fighting angry memories. His mother had always had to remove her apron before answering the door. And her headscarf. He could see her now nervously patting her hair in the hall mirror, smoothing her collar. ‘Mrs Willows to see you, my lady.’

They entered a cobbled yard at the back of the house and, as they did so, a small dog, very thin, with a grey muzzle and brindled chest, came hurrying towards them. He was an old Jack Russell and his eyes were not good. He was quite close to the two men before he realized his mistake. Troy bent down to pat the dog but it turned, inconsolably, away. Barnaby approached the back door. ‘Perhaps we’ll have more luck here.’

It stood wide open, revealing a vast kitchen. A man, facing the door, sat at a refectory table in an attitude of complete dejection, his forehead supported on one hand, his shoulders sagging. Close to him, perched on the table’s edge with her back to Barnaby, was a young girl. As Barnaby watched she leaned forward and touched the man’s shoulder. Immediately he seized her hand then, looking up, saw the two men in the doorway and leapt to his feet. The girl turned to face them more slowly.

Years after the case was closed Barnaby would still remember his first sight of Katherine Lacey. She was wearing a silk dress, ivory and apple-green stripes, and was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. And her beauty was more than simple perfection of face and form (and how often in any case did you come across that?); it had the remote perfection of a distant star. It smote the heart. She came towards them, her exquisite lips parted in a smile.

‘I’m sorry - have you been ringing long? I don’t always hear in the kitchen.’ Barnaby explained the reason for their visit. ‘Oh, of course - please come in. We were all so shocked to hear the police had been called in, weren’t we, David?’ The man, who had re-seated himself in one of the wheelback chairs, did not reply. ‘She taught my father, you know, Miss Simpson. Both my parents were very fond of her. I’m Katherine Lacey by the way. And this is David Whiteley, our farm manager.’

Barnaby nodded and queried her movements on the day in question whilst glancing at the man at the table. He was over six feet tall, with the bronzed, almost weathered complexion of someone who works continually in the open. He had vivid cobalt-blue eyes and hair the colour of flax, worn rather longer than might have been expected. He appeared to be somewhere in his late thirties and was now looking more resentful than dejected. Barnaby wondered what would have happened if he and Troy had not appeared on the doorstep. Was the girl’s touch on his shoulder a gesture of comfort? A caress? Would his fervent handclasp have led to a rebuff? Or a kiss?

‘... the afternoon’s easy. Most of it was spent in the village hall getting ready for the gymkhana on the Saturday. You know ... putting the trestles up ... sorting things ... I was helping on the WI stall.’

‘I see ...’ Barnaby nodded, trying in vain to picture Miss Lacy in the Women’s Institute. ‘What time did you leave?’

‘Oh around four I think. But it could’ve been earlier. I’m hopeless about time, as Henry will tell you.’

‘And did you go straight home?’

‘Yes. To pick up the Peugeot. Then I drove over to the barn at Huyton’s End to collect Henry. He has an office -’

She broke off suddenly, then said, ‘Look - wouldn’t it be more sensible if you talked to us both together? We always have some coffee around now in the drawing room. You’re welcome to join us.’

Barnaby declined the coffee but agreed that her suggestion was a helpful one.

‘You come too, David.’ She smiled again, this time at the man in the chair, and the three of them followed her back view, only marginally less heavenly than the front, across a hall and down a long carpeted corridor. One wall was lined with ornately framed oil paintings of Trace’s past, the other with delicate watercolours to which Barnaby lent an expert and envious eye. At the end of the corridor double glass doors opened on to an orangery: a dazzling pattern of white iron loops and curls. Through the glass Barnaby caught a glimpse of formal lawns, elegant topiary and a glittering fountain. He wondered if there were peacocks. Katherine spoke over her shoulder.

‘Apart from Henry the only other person living here at the moment is Phyllis Cadell - his sister-in-law. Her room is upstairs.’ She turned sharply and opened the first door on her right.

They entered a very long drawing room. The walls were stippled apricot and cream and there were rich Persian rugs scattered over the high honey-gloss parquet. Rocailles of gold leaf decorated the ceiling. At the far end of the room a man sat in a wheelchair by a magnificent Adam fireplace. There was no fire but the space was filled with a starburst of white and silver flowers and leaves. The man’s knees were covered by a travelling rug. He had a grave - almost stern - face with two deep grooves running from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His dark hair was streaked with grey and his shoulders were slightly bent. Barnaby was surprised to discover later that Henry Trace was only forty-two. He wondered if it was quite without thought that David Whiteley took the seat nearest to his employer. There could hardly have been a crueller contrast. Even in repose Whiteley had an air of aggressive vitality. His limbs, so straight and strong, seemed almost to be bursting the seams of his cords and check shirt. Marlboro man, jeered Troy to himself. Katherine explained why the police were there, then sat on a footstool close to the wheelchair and took Trace’s hand.

‘A terrible business,’ he said, ‘surely it’s not true that there’s been foul play?’

‘We’re just making a few inquiries at this stage, sir.’

‘I just can’t believe anyone would wish to harm her,’ continued Trace, ‘she was the kindest soul alive.’

He didn’t add, noticed Troy, flipping open his pro-forma pad, that she taught his mum. Probably went to a private school. All right for some.

‘I actually saw her on the day she died,’ said Katherine, her voice quite untainted by the slightly salacious excitement that usually accompanies this sort of remark.

‘When was this?’ asked Barnaby, glancing at Troy who described an arc with his pencil to show awareness.

‘In the morning. I don’t remember the exact time I called at the cottage. She’d promised me some honey for the stall. She gave me some parsley wine as well. She was always very generous.’

‘And that was the last time you saw her?’ Katherine nodded. ‘To return to the afternoon ... you left the hall around four ... took the Peugeot ... ?’

‘And drove over to Henry’s office. I picked him up, we came back here, had supper and spent the evening wrangling over -’

‘Discussing.’

‘- discussing’ - she screwed her head round and gave him a teasing look - ‘a new rosarium. I left about half-past ten.’

‘You don’t live here then, Miss Lacey?’

‘Not until next Saturday. We’re to be married then.’ She exchanged glances with the man in the wheelchair. Hers was simply fond but his was not only adoring but triumphant. The triumph of a collector who has spotted a rare and beautiful specimen and, against all the odds, captured it for himself. If you’ve got the money, thought Sergeant Troy, you can buy anything.

‘I live in a cottage on the edge of the beechwoods. Holly Cottage. It’s quite outside the village, really.’ A shadow darkened her eyes. She added so quietly that Barnaby could hardly hear, ‘With my brother Michael.’ He asked the exact location of the cottage and she described it, adding, ‘But you won’t find him there at the moment. He’s gone into Causton to buy some brushes.’ Even volunteering this hardly disturbing piece of information seemed to distress her and she folded her lips together tightly and frowned. Trace patted her head gently as if soothing a fretful animal.

‘Did you pass Miss Simpson’s house on your way home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see anyone? Or hear or notice anything?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Was the light on? The curtains closed?’

‘I’m sorry - I just don’t remember.’

‘Thank you.’ Barnaby turned his attention to Henry Trace. He felt the questions here were a mere formality, yet not to have asked them would have appeared insensitive to say the least. Whilst Trace could perhaps have wheeled himself down to Miss Simpson’s cottage and poisoned her (in which case his fiancée was lying about their evening together) he could hardly have been frolicking in the woods that afternoon, even assuming any man on the point of marrying Katharine Lacey would have been mad enough to want to. There had been no wheel or tyre marks anywhere near the place. Barnaby assumed the paralysis was genuine. It was surely only in films that strong, healthy people spent years concealed under a rug in a wheelchair simply so that they could leap out at the crucial moment and commit the perfect crime.

‘Do you confirm Miss Lacey’s account of your movements together, Mr Trace?’ He heard the flick of paper from Troy’s corner.

‘Yes I do.’

‘And were other people about when you were in your office?’

‘Oh yes. Tractors are stored there. All the fertilizers. There’s a hopper ... out-buildings. It’s a very busy part of the farm.’

‘How large is the farm?’

‘Five thousand acres.’

Sergeant Troy’s pencil stabbed savagely at his page. ‘And could you give me the name of your doctor?’

‘My doctor?’ Henry Trace gave Barnaby a bemused stare. Then the stare faded. He said, ‘Oh - I see.’ The grooves on his face deepened. He smiled, a smile totally without any mirth or pleasure. ‘Trevor Lessiter’s my GP. But you’d best have a word with Mr Hollingsworth, University College, London.’ He added bitterly, ‘He’ll be able to confirm that my paralysis is genuine.’

There was a cry of indignation from the girl at his feet and she stared at Barnaby angrily. Trace said, ‘It’s all right, darling. They have to ask these things.’ But she remained unmollified and continued to glare at the two policemen during the questioning of David Whiteley. Troy thought this made her look more beautiful than ever. The farm manager’s replies were brief. He said he had been working on the afternoon in question.

‘Where precisely was this?’

‘Three miles down the Gessler Tye road. I was repairing some fencing. There was a nasty accident a couple of days before and a considerable amount got smashed.’

Barnaby nodded. ‘And when you were through there?’

‘I drove into Causton to order some more netting. And then went home.’

‘I see. You didn’t return to the farm office?’

‘No. It was nearly six by then. I don’t have to clock on and off, you know. I’m not a hired hand.’ He strove to sound amused but there was a flick of temper in his voice.

‘And home is ... ?’

‘Witchetts. The house with the green shutters opposite the pub. Goes with the job.’

‘And in the evening?’

‘I showered. Had a drink. Watched a little television. Then went to the Bear at Gessler for a meal and some company.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About half eight I suppose.’

‘You’re not married, Mr Whiteley?’

‘Mind your own business!’

‘David!’ cried Henry Trace. ‘There’s no need -’

‘I’m sorry but I really don’t see how the hell whether I’m married or not is relevant to an inquiry into the death of an old woman I barely knew in the first place.’ He closed his mouth stubbornly, folded his arms and crossed his legs. A moment later he uncrossed them. Then crossed them the other way again. Barnaby, looking completely incurious, sat placidly in his armchair. Henry and Katherine looked rather embarrassed. Troy eyed Whiteley’s straining calves and biceps caustically. He knew the type. Fancied himself as a stud. Probably couldn’t even get it up without half a dozen beers and a soft porn video. The silence lengthened. Then David Whiteley heaved an exaggerated sigh.

‘Well yes, if you must know I am married, but we’ve been living apart for the past three years. Since shortly before I came to work here, in fact. She’s a domestic science teacher and lives in Slough. And, just to save you ferreting out every little genealogical detail, we have a nine-year-old son. His name is James Laurence Whiteley and last time I saw him he was just over four feet tall and weighed in at around five stone. He was into Depeche Mode, BMX and computer games and played a mean game of basketball. Of course that was some considerable time ago. It’s probably all different now.’ Sarcasm and anger failed in the last remark. His voice, thick with emotion, broke off suddenly.

‘Thank you, Mr Whiteley.’ Barnaby waited a few moments then continued, ‘To return to the evening of the seventeenth. Can you tell me when you left the Bear?’

Whiteley took a long deep breath before replying. ‘Roughly half an hour before closing time. They might remember. I’m a regular there.’

‘And you drove straight home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you give me the make and registration of your car?’

‘It’s a Citroën estate. ETX 373V.’

‘Fine.’ Barnaby rose. ‘You’ve been very cooperative. I believe, Miss Lacey, you mentioned there was someone else living here?’

‘Well yes,’ Henry Trace said, ‘there’s Phyllis. But isn’t she down at her new place?’

‘No.’ Katherine rose to her feet. ‘I heard her come in half an hour ago. I’ll show you the way.’ She pointed her words in the general direction of Barnaby but without looking at him. As she took the first step away Henry caught her hand.

‘Come straight back.’

‘Of course I will.’ She bent her head and kissed the corner of his mouth. It was a chaste kiss, but the look she got in return was far from chaste. They made a charming picture, thought Barnaby. Trace with his distinguished severe profile, the girl fresh and lovely bending over him, both posed against a fall of grey watered-silk curtains. Perhaps it was this final rather theatrical touch that gave Barnaby the feeling that the charming scene was in some way unnatural. It seemed so contrivedly perfect; brimming with false pathos like a sentimental Victorian greeting card or an illustration from Dickens. He couldn’t quite explain this perception. It was not that he believed either of them was playing a part. He shifted his gaze to include David Whiteley. Perhaps his presence had been father to the thought. Perhaps it was simply that the girl was with the wrong man. That youth should call to youth. Barnaby watched Whiteley watching the girl. His glance was far from chaste as well. Barnaby thought that Henry Trace would be a very unusual man if, when his fiancée and his farm manager were both out of his sight, he didn’t occasionally wonder ... A collector will naturally expect a covetous attitude on the part of other collectors. Especially with regard to his prize specimen.

Katherine led them up a tall curved staircase and down yet another corridor, this one sporting little highly polished half-moon tables holding vases of flowers, snuffboxes and miniatures.

‘What is the lady’s full name?’

‘Phyllis Cadell.’

‘Miss?’

‘Very much so.’ The squeeze of lemon in her voice intrigued and pleased Barnaby. Too much sweetness and light could cloy after a while, in his opinion. Rather a short while too. He liked what he called ‘a bit of edge’. He wondered what Phyllis Cadell’s exact position in the household was and if it would change after the marriage. Surely any new wife would want to take the reins into her own hands. And, with a disabled husband, she would need to be exceptionally capable. He looked at Miss Lacey’s slightly sunburned hand as she knocked at the door. It looked stronger than her rather flower-like appearance would lead you to expect.

‘Oh Phyllis - I’m sorry to disturb you ...’

Barnaby followed her into the room. He saw a rather plump, middle-aged woman with a slab-like face, gooseberry-green eyes and dull brown hair done in a youthful style with a fronded fringe and hard tight little curls. Atop her long pale face it looked foolish, like a wig on a horse. She was sitting in front of a large flickering television set, a box of fudge on her knees.

‘... it’s the police.’

The woman jumped. Cubes of fudge went flying everywhere. She crouched, concealing her face, but not before Barnaby had seen fear leaping to life behind her eyes. Katherine bent down too. It was assorted fudge: three shades of brown (vanilla, mocha, chocolate), and some squares were studded with walnuts and cherries.

‘You won’t be able to eat these now, Phyllis -’

‘I can pick up a few sweets, thank you. Leave me alone.’ She was cramming fluffy cubes anyoldhow into the box. She still didn’t look at the two men.

‘You’ll show Chief Inspector Barnaby out then, will you?’ Receiving no reply Katherine turned to leave, saying just before she closed the door, ‘It’s about Miss Simpson.’

At this remark Barnaby noticed the colour rush back into the older woman’s cheeks but unevenly, leaving the skin mottled, as if she had been roasting her face by the fire. She gushed at them, ‘Of course, poor Emily. Why didn’t I think? Sit down ... sit down both of you.’

Barnaby selected a fawn fireside chair and looked around him. A very different atmosphere from the drawing room downstairs. Not uncomfortably furnished yet quite lacking in individuality. There were no ornaments or photographs and hardly any books. A few copies of The Lady, a couple of insipid prints and a dying plant on the windowsill. Apart from the television set it could have been any dentist’s waiting room.

Phyllis Cadell switched off the box and sat facing them. Any anxiety she may have felt at their arrival was now firmly under control. She turned a bland but concerned gaze upon them both. If it had not been for the knees, far too firmly clamped together, and the cords standing out in the soft, flabby neck Barnaby might have thought her quite relaxed. She was affably forthcoming as to her movements on the seventeenth. In the afternoon she had been in the village hall setting up the tombola. And she had spent the evening ‘quite blamelessly I assure you, Chief Inspector’ watching television.

This did not surprise Barnaby. He found it hard to picture the matronly figure, flesh springing free from rigorously confining corsets, rolling and frolicking in the greenwood. He did not of course discount the possibility. The most unlikely characters have stirred others to romantic yearnings. How often had he heard his wife say ‘I don’t know what he sees in her’? Or, less frequently, the reverse. No, the count against Phyllis Cadell being the woman in the woods was not her unglamorous appearance but the fact that she had nothing to lose by discovery. She might even, taking into account society’s attitude towards unattached middle-aged females, have a lot to gain. So, in that case, why had she been so frightened when they had first arrived?

‘And what time did you leave the hall, Miss Cadell?’

‘Let’s see’ - she tapped her top lip with a tallow-coloured finger - ‘I was almost the last to go ... it must have been half-past four ... quarter to five.’

‘Did you leave with Miss Lacey?’

‘Katherine? Good gracious no. She left much earlier. Was hardly there at all, really.’ She caught the glance that Sergeant Troy turned on to Barnaby’s unresponsive profile. ‘Oh dear’ - she made an arch little moue of false regret - ‘I hope I haven’t said anything I shouldn’t?’

‘And did you go out at all after you’d returned home?’

‘No. I came straight up here when we’d finished dinner. Wrote a couple of letters, then as I have already stated, watched some television.’

As I have already stated, echoed Troy to himself, transcribing carefully. People often said things like that when they were talking to the police. Formal jargony sorts of remarks they’d never dream of making any other time. He listened as Miss Cadell proceeded to give details of all the programmes she’d watched, then, as if this in itself might be thought suspicious, added, ‘I only remember because it was Friday. The gardening programmes, you see?’

Barnaby did see. He watched them himself whenever he was home in time. He said, ‘Do you have staff living in here?’

‘No. We have a gardener and a boy. Between them they look after the grounds, clean the cars and do any maintenance. And there’s Mrs Quine. She comes about ten o’clock. Does the general cleaning, prepares any vegetables for dinner, cooks a light lunch, then goes about three. I cook in the evening and she will clear away and wash up when she comes the next day. I do hope Katherine will keep her on. She brings her little girl and not everyone will accept children. Oddly enough we shared her with poor Miss Simpson. She went there for an hour each morning before she came to us ...’

‘And will you continue to live here after the wedding, Miss Cadell?’

‘Good heavens, no.’ A strangled yelp which might have been a laugh. ‘A house cannot hold two mistresses. No, I’m being pensioned off. Henry has several cottages on the estate. Two have been ... I believe the term is knocked together. There’s a small garden. It’s ... very nice.’

Not as nice as being mistress of Tye House, thought Barnaby, picturing again the splendid vista previously seen through the orangery. Not nearly as nice.

‘Has Mr Trace been a widower long?’ There it was again. As clear and bright as a match struck in a darkened room. The flicker of fear. Phyllis Cadell looked away from him, studying the more nondescript of the two landscapes on the wall.

‘I don’t see how that can possibly have any relevance to Miss Simpson’s death.’

‘No. I beg your pardon.’ Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby waited. In his experience people (hardened criminals apart) who had something to hide and people who had nothing to hide had one thing in common. Faced by a policeman asking questions they could never remain silent for long. After a few moments Phyllis Cadell began to speak. The words tumbled out as if she couldn’t wait to be rid of them and done with the matter.

‘Bella died about a year ago. In September. A shooting accident. It was a terrible tragedy. She was only thirty-two. There was a full report in the local paper at the time.’

All that on one breath, thought Barnaby. And through lips the colour of milk. He said, ‘Is that when you came to run the house?’

‘Not at all. I moved here just after the wedding. Bella wasn’t really interested in the domestic side of things. Country pursuits were her forte. Riding, fishing. And looking after Henry, of course. They’d been married nearly five years when she died.’

‘Miss Lacey seems to be very young to be taking on so much?’ hinted Barnaby, but in vain. Her emotions were now as tenaciously confined as the swoop of her pouter-pigeon chest.

‘Oh I don’t know. I should think she’ll make a charming lady of the manor. And now’ - she got up - ‘if that’s all ... ?’

She led them briskly down the staircase to the front hall, then stopped suddenly between two old, once-gilded wooden figures. For a moment they all stood on the black-and-white-tiled floor like chess pieces, useful but impotent until nudged into play. Phyllis shifted from one foot to another (beleaguered queen) then spoke.

‘Umm ... you must have thought I looked quite startled to see you ... taken aback ... when you first arrived?’

Barnaby looked politely interested. Troy established eye contact with the taller of the two figures; a king with a soaring crown and traces of lapis lazuli still on his pupils.

‘The truth is ... I ... well it’s my car tax. You know how it is ...’ A nervous smile twitched into being, showing strong stained teeth. ‘One always means to make a note of these things ...’

‘Yes,’ agreed the chief inspector, ‘that is a sensible idea.’

As the door closed quickly behind them Troy said, ‘Pathetic.’ He could have meant the woman’s appearance, her position in the household or the awkward and obvious lie about the road tax. Barnaby could only agree on all three counts.

Katherine Lacey wandered slowly across the cobbled yard, watching the two policemen walk away. In spite of the heat of the day she felt cold. Benjy whined sadly from the shelter of the first silo. She crossed over and picked him up. He started to struggle in her arms. His fur slipped over his ribs as if there were no flesh at all to separate them.

‘Darling ... ?’ She heard the soft bump as Henry negotiated the kitchen step and wheeled himself towards her. She put the dog down. ‘Is something the matter?’

She strove to compose herself before turning to him. She didn’t reply, just shook her head, the bell of glossy dark hair swinging over her face.

‘Is it Benjy? You must give way on that you know, Kate. We’ve both tried everything we can. He’s simply not going to eat. Please ... let me call the vet ...’

‘Oh - just another day!’

‘He’s an old dog. He misses her too much. We can’t sit here and watch him starve.’

‘It’s not just that.’ She turned then, crouching clumsily by the chair. ‘It’s ... I can’t explain ... oh Henry ...’ She seized his hands: ‘I’ve just got the most terrible feelings ...’

‘What d’you mean?’ He smiled down at her, his tone indulgent. ‘What sort of feelings?’

‘I can’t say exactly ... just that things are going to go dreadfully wrong for us ... the wedding won’t happen ...’

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense.’

‘I knew you’d say that. But you don’t understand ...’ She broke off, studying his face. Kind, handsome, a shade complacent. And why shouldn’t it be? The Traces went back to Norman times. Effigies of Sir Robert Trayce and his wyffe Ismelda and her cat rested eternally in the cool of the thirteenth-century church. Traces had shed a modest amount of their landowning blood in the two world wars and returned to their squirearchical duties garlanded with honour. The words security of tenure were meaningless to them. They had never known anything else.

‘... You don’t understand,’ Katherine repeated. ‘Because you’ve never wanted anything you couldn’t have you can’t see that life isn’t always like that. I think these things that are happening ... Miss Simpson dying ... and now Benjy ... and Michael refusing to come on Saturday ... I think they’re omens ...’

Henry Trace laughed. ‘Beware the Ides of March.’

‘Don’t laugh.’

‘I’m sorry, darling, but there’s no one squeaking and gibbering in the streets that I can see.’

‘What?’

‘And as for Michael ... well ... he’s hardly an omen. You must’ve known for weeks that he’d probably refuse to give you away. You know what he’s like.’

‘But I thought ... on my wedding day ...’

‘Do you want me to talk to him?’

‘It won’t make any difference. You’d think after all you’d done for us it would -’

‘Hush. You mustn’t talk like that. I’ve done nothing.’ As she got up, leaning on the arms of his chair, he said, ‘Poor little knees, all dented from the cobbles.’ He lifted the hem of her dress and touched the dimpled flesh tenderly. ‘Dear little knees ... Henry make them better.’

At a window above their heads Phyllis Cadell turned abruptly away. She switched on the television set and slumped into the nearest armchair. Voices filled the room. On the screen a couple, mad with ecstatic greed, were struggling to embrace a mountain of consumer durables whilst an audience, hardly less ecstatic, screamed abuse and encouragement. Wearing a fixed insane grin, the woman slipped, dislodged a can and brought the whole pyramid crashing to the ground. Phyllis pressed her remote control and got a besotted duo in love with each other’s breakfast cereal. Button three activated a bucolic scene showing an elderly couple saturated with contentment reading their golden wedding telegrams, surrounded by their loving family. Button four brought an old black and white movie. Two men were holding a third by the arms while Sterling Haydon battered him to bits. A left to the jaw, then a right. Smack. Crunch. Then two to the belly, breath sucked in, an agonizing whistle. Then a knee to the groin and a punch in the kidneys.

Phyllis settled back. She seized the box of fudge and started cramming the gritty, fluff-embellished cubes into her mouth. She packed them in fiercely and without a break as if making an assault on her jaws. Tears poured down her cheeks.

Chapter Four

‘I expect the wedding’ll be a posh do. Marquees and all that?’ Troy looked to the horizon as he spoke, casting a green eye on Henry Trace’s assets. Miles and miles and miles of waving money.

‘No doubt.’ Barnaby turned left as they walked away from Tye House, making for the terraced cottages. Troy, not wishing to receive another put-down, did not ask why his chief was going in for a bit of mundane door-to-door. But in the event Barnaby chose to enlighten him.

‘That bungalow’ - he nodded towards the end of the terrace - ‘is what interests me. There’s someone there keeping a very sharp eye on things. I’m interested to hear what the neighbours have to say.’

‘I see, sir,’ was all Troy could think of in reply, but he felt warm with satisfaction on receipt of this small confidence.

The first cottage was empty, the occupants, as a very old lady next door informed them, being outsiders from London who hadn’t been down for at least a month. And the man in the last cottage was out till six every weekday teaching in Amersham. Troy took his name for the evening checkers. The old lady was taciturn about her own affairs, simply saying she hadn’t been out at all on the day in question. Then she jerked her head over the neat box hedge at cottage number three.

‘You want to ask her where she was on Friday. She’d poison her grandmother for a haporth o’ nuts.’ Next door a window slammed.

‘And the bungalow ... ?’

‘Don’t know nothing about them.’ She shut the door firmly.

‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ said Troy as they walked down the path. ‘A tiny place like this and she doesn’t know anything about the people two doors down.’

‘It is indeed,’ replied Barnaby, arriving at the next cottage, lifting a grimacing pixie by the legs and letting go smartly.

An even older lady appeared and gave them roughly the same spiel, the only difference being that here the blood money came out as two pennorth o’ cheese. Then she laid a freckled bunch of weightless bones on the chief inspector’s sleeve. ‘Listen, young man,’ she said, suddenly appearing to him much the nicer of the two old ladies, ‘if you want to know what’s going on - or what’s coming off either’ - she gave a dry chuckle, shockingly lewd through withered lips - ‘you have a word with Mrs Rainbird next house down. She can tell you what’s in your hankie after you’ve blown your nose in the pitch dark behind locked doors. Spends all her time up in the loft with a pair of binoculars. Says she’s a ornyowzit. Camouflage.’ She repeated the word, tapping him on the lapel. ‘In my young day you hung over the gate and gossiped in the open. I don’t know what the world’s coming to and that’s a fact.’ She then confided that Mrs Rainbird had a son in the box and casket trade. ‘And a slimy little wart he is an’ all. They reckon he keeps his knickers in the fridge.’

Sergeant Troy snorted and turned it into a cough. Barnaby, having met Mr Rainbird, could only assume that they were right. He thanked the old lady and withdrew.

The bungalow was called Tranquillada. Barnaby thought this suggested a slightly relaxed version of the Spanish Inquisition. The name suspended from the neck of a large ceramic stork killing time on one leg by the front door. There was quite a large garden, beautifully kept and full of ornamental shrubs and roses. The silver Porsche was parked in the drive. Sergeant Troy chose the bell rather than the knocker and got a brief shrill earful of the dawn chorus. Dennis Rainbird appeared.

‘Well hullo again.’ He seemed delighted to see Barnaby. ‘And you’ve brought a friend.’ He gave Troy a radiant smile which bounced off the sergeant’s stony countenance like a ping-pong ball off a concrete slab. ‘Come in, come in. Mother,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘it’s the constabulary.’ He prounced it constabewlery.

‘Oh but I was expecting them.’ A gentle fluting from some distance away.

The bungalow seemed much larger than the outside suggested and Dennis led them past several open doors before reaching the lounge. A kitchen that gleamed, a bedroom (all white and gold) that glittered and a second bedroom adorned with lots of red suede and shining brass.

‘I’m in the lounge, Denny,’ carolled the voice. It managed to sound every vowel the word possessed, then generously tossed in another O for good measure. As they entered Mrs Rainbird rose from her downy cushions as if from a nest.

She was very, very fat. She spread outwards and towered upwards. At least a quarter of her height seemed to be accounted for by her hair, which was a rigid pagoda-like structure: a landscape of peaks and waves, whorls and curls ending in a sharp point like an inverted ice-cream cone. It was the colour of butterscotch instant whip. She wore a great deal of makeup in excitable colours and a lilac caftan, rather short, revealing bolstery legs and tiny feet. The chief inspector fielded her welcoming glance, direct and sharp as a lancet, and introduced himself.

‘I knew you were on your way. I saw a car drive by whilst I was studying some swallows on the telephone wires. Such a charming arrangement. Quite like notes of music.’

‘Ah ... perhaps it was you I glimpsed the other morning when I was in Church Lane? In your loft I think. An excellent vantage point.’

‘Hide is the term we ornithologists prefer, Mr Barnaby.’ A nip in the air. Barnaby begged her pardon. She waved a sparkling hand. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Barnaby sank into an armchair thickly barnacled with bumps of crochet.

‘And what about you, dear?’ Dennis danced around Sergeant Troy. ‘Don’t you want to take the weight off those legs?’

Bristling with machismo, Troy selected the hardest chair, sat in it bolt upright and produced his pro-forma pad. A piercing whistle filled the air.

‘Denny? Pot to kettle.’ As he disappeared she said to Barnaby, ‘You’ll need to be fed and watered.’ Then, overriding his protests, ‘Now, now. Don’t tell me you’re not absolutely exhausted asking all those people all those questions. It’s quite ready.’

And so it was. Moments later, a gentle rattling preceding him, Dennis entered wheeling an overwrought trolley built along the lines of the altarpiece at the Brompton Oratory. This was loaded with tiny sandwiches in the shapes of playing card symbols and rich creamy cakes. Mrs Rainbird filled a plate for Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby and handed it over.

‘Now you mustn’t refuse, Mr Barnaby.’ (She addressed him as Mr Barnaby throughout their conversation, perhaps believing that policemen in the higher echelons were, like their medical counterparts, titularly civil.) ‘The inner man, you know.’

Her son poured the tea, his bloodless white fingers flickering over the crockery. He popped an apostle spoon with a large purple stone embedded in the handle in a saucer and handed it, with the cup, to Barnaby. Feeling slightly repelled, the chief inspector took it and leaned back rather uncomfortably on his crunchy support.

Dennis dealt an anchovy club, a salmon-spread spade, a potted-meat diamond and a marmite heart on to a plate, added a meringue erupting with chestnut-coloured worms, and swayed over to Sergeant Troy. He put everything on an occasional table, brought over the tea then swayed back to his mother. They beamed at each other then he plumped up her cushions before sitting, appropriately enough, on a pouffe at her feet. Finally Barnaby spoke.

‘We’re making inquiries into an unexplained death -’

‘Poor Miss Simpson of course,’ interrupted Mrs Rainbird. ‘I blame the parents.’

‘- and would be glad if you and your son could give me some idea of your whereabouts on the afternoon and evening of last Friday?’

‘Myself doing the flower arrangements and plants in the village hall. No doubt you’ve heard about the gymkhana?’ Barnaby indicated that he had. ‘I left around four-thirty with Miss Cadell of Tye House. One of the last as always. I’m afraid I’m one of those dreadful people who has to have everything just so.’ A little preen. A smug smile. She had a mouth like a goldfish which, even in repose, had a pushed-forward pouty expression. ‘“Delegate, Iris, delegate!” is my constant cry, but do you think I ever can? Where was I?’

‘One of the last to leave.’

‘Ah yes. I believe only Miss Thornburn, our dear Akela, remained.’

‘Did you happen to notice what time Miss Lacey left?’

‘A few minutes before four o’clock.’

‘Are you sure?’ Foolish question. He already felt he was in the presence of something oracular rather than merely observant. Mrs Rainbird obviously had the eye of an eagle and, almost as important, an eagle’s Olympian lack of interest in the welfare of its prey.

‘Quite sure,’ resumed Mrs Rainbird. ‘She slipped away, in my opinion, in a very furtive manner indeed.’ She deigned to glance at Sergeant Troy on the last few words to make sure he was noting them down. ‘But I’m rather curious as to why we’re being asked about the afternoon. I understood that Miss Simpson died much later.’

‘We’re not sure exactly when she died.’

‘Well she was definitely alive around five o’clock because I saw her.’

‘You saw her!’

‘Certainly I did.’ She basked for a moment in the warmth of his reaction. Dennis screwed his head round and gave her an approving smirk. ‘I just happened to be in the hide at the time, charting the flight of a waxwing. Emily came hurrying along Church Lane from the direction of the woods. She stopped once, holding her side. I wondered if she were ill and had almost decided to run over when Denny arrived for his tea. Didn’t you, pet?’ Did her hand tighten on his shoulder? Certainly the sparklers were activated into instant life.

‘Mm.’ He laid his cheek briefly against her knees. ‘I usually get home about five-thirty but that night -’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, Mr Rainbird. We’ll take those details in a moment.’

‘I can hardly wait.’ Dennis bit his lower lip, pink with delight at being the recipient of such masterful instructions. He smiled at Sergeant Troy, a smile as sweet and sickly as the vanilla slice he was consuming. ‘I don’t think the sergeant likes his marron Lyonnaise, Mother.’

‘Press him to a frangipane, then. Yes’ - she turned her attention back to Barnaby - ‘I was definitely concerned. In fact I’d almost decided to visit her after supper but then we got involved in a game of Monopoly and I felt it could wait till morning. She had a telephone after all and Miss Bellringer was close by. So we didn’t go out at all, did we, pet?’

‘No. Little home birds we.’

‘And who won all of Park Lane?’

‘Me, me! And a big chunk of Piccadilly.’

‘I saw Katherine Lacey again, though. Around eight o’clock time.’

‘Really? Wasn’t that a little late to be pursuing your hobby, Mrs Rainbird? What on earth is on the wing at that hour?’

‘Owls, Mr Barnaby.’ A very sharp look.

‘Ah.’

‘Denizens of the night.’

‘Quite so.’

‘We had taken a little break from the game, Denny was making some coffee and I just happened to glance out of the window.’

‘I see. Did you notice where Miss Lacey went?’

She leaned forward dramatically and, as she still had her hand on her son’s shoulder, so did he. What a macabre double act they were, thought Barnaby. He was unaccountably reminded of the Joe Orton play his wife had been in last month. They would have fitted a treat into that.

‘She was turning into Church Lane.’

‘Do you think she was calling on someone?’

‘I couldn’t see. The road curves sharply to the right almost immediately. She’d got one of the beagles with her. And a letter in her hand.’

‘So she may have been simply going to the post box?’ Mrs Rainbird lifted an eyebrow like a crayoned new moon. It said that if he believed that he’d believe anything. ‘And did you see her return?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Her voice thickened with chagrin. ‘Mrs Pauncefoot rang. Wanted some more Lilium regale for the judges’ platform. If only I’d known’ - she punched her palm with her fist - ‘I would have kept watch.’

Her expression was far more than just peevish. She seemed to seethe with frustration at this reminder of an opportunity missed. She obviously couldn’t bear not to know what was going on between everyone, everywhere, all the time. Charting the flayt of a waxwing my backside, thought Barnaby, and turned to question her son.

‘At work all afternoon, which my partner will confirm, left around quarter to five, drove straight home and stayed there.’

‘I didn’t realize you were a partner in the business, Mr Rainbird.’

‘Mother bought me in on my twenty-first. I’d been there three years by then and just knew I wasn’t ever going to want to do anything else.’ He hugged his knees boyishly. ‘I absolutely adore it. You understand?’

Barnaby tried to look as if he understood. In fact he was not overly concerned with the Rainbirds’ alibis. What he was after at Tranquillada was something much more useful. Background information on the village inhabitants. And gossip. If he had summed up Iris Rainbird correctly both should be forthcoming once the correct opening gambits had been played.

He said, ‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate, Mrs Rainbird, in a case like this how grateful we are to have someone as alert ... as observant as yourself to call on. To fill the gaps as it were.’ The pagoda inclined graciously. ‘Tell me ... Miss Lacey and her brother ... have they lived in the village long?’

‘All their lives. Although not always in Holly Cottage. Their parents had a large farmhouse just a little way out on the Gessler Tye road. No land to speak of, just an acre of garden. Oh very upper class they were then. Old family nanny, the children at Bedales, ponies and cars and off to France every five minutes. And shooting and hunting in the holidays. Thought themselves real gentry. They weren’t, of course. No breeding at all.’ Sergeant Troy, his pencil at rest, recognized the concealed resentment in this remark immediately, without knowing why. ‘People liked Madelaine but he was an appalling man. Drank a lot and drove like a maniac. Violent too. They say he used to ill treat her. Quite heartless -’

‘Just like his son.’ Dennis spoke impulsively, his sallow cheeks flushed. This time there was no mistaking the warning grip on his shoulder. He added, stammering, ‘Well ... so I’ve heard.’

‘Then, when the children were about thirteen all the money went. He’d been speculating, raised a second mortgage, raised more against that and lost the lot. It killed Madelaine.’

‘Do you mean literally?’

‘I certainly do. Drove her car into the Thames at Flackwell Heath. She hadn’t been dead more than a couple of months before he married some chit of a girl he met in London and off they went to live in Canada.’

‘And the children.’

‘Well ... that was the end of the private schools of course. They had to come and attend at Gessler Tye with the rest of the hoi polloi.’ Satisfaction rang in her voice. Troy gave an unconscious nod of approval.

‘And where did they live?’

‘Now of course the Traces come into the picture. Henry was one of the first people that Gerald Lacey turned to for money. And he loaned him a considerable amount. I think he felt afterwards that it would have been better if he hadn’t. If he’d tried to help Gerald sort his affairs out instead. At least that’s the impression I got from Mrs Trace - Bella, that is ...’

Chief Inspector Barnaby tried to imagine the late Mrs Trace discussing her husband’s financial affairs with Mrs Rainbird, and failed. He wondered where she had really picked up the information.

‘Hence Holly Cottage.’

‘Oh?’

‘A gamekeeper lived in it originally. Henry offered it to the children and the nanny stayed to look after them. They gave her a terrible time, poor old soul. Thick as thieves when they were little, always leading her a dance. Then, when they were older, endless rows. Well you know what adolescents are. Not that my Denny ever gave me any trouble.’ Denny simpered into his vanilla slice. A fringe of cream, hardly in colour any different from his skin, graced his upper lip. ‘She used to come over here, Nanny Sharpe, just for a cup of tea and a bit of peace and quiet. Cat and dog wasn’t in it. Have you seen that mark on Michael’s face?’

‘We haven’t yet interviewed Mr Lacey.’

‘She gave him that ... his sister. Threw an iron at him, apparently.’ She noticed his change of expression and sniffed. ‘Oh you can look, Mr Barnaby. Those pansy faces take everyone in but they don’t fool yours truly.’

Mrs Rainbird’s detachment, which he had so admired at the start of their interview, seemed to have temporarily deserted her. The fact that the son she obviously if somewhat unhealthily adored had been slighted in some way seemed still to rankle.

‘Did Mr Trace support the Laceys financially?’

‘Oh yes. The father didn’t leave a penny piece behind. And, as far as I know, Henry still is supporting Michael. Not that he’d get a word of thanks.’

‘Doesn’t Mr Lacey work, then?’

‘If you can call painting work.’

‘And is he successful? Does he sell much?’

‘No he doesn’t. And I’m not surprised. Ugly violent things. Lays the paint on with a shovel. Mind you there’s no shortage of models.’

‘No,’ chipped in Dennis. ‘That Lessiter girl’s always hanging round. Not that it’ll get her anywhere - frumpy old thing. Michael painted me once, you know.’ He bridled, all pallid petulance, in Troy’s direction.

‘And a hideous thing it was too.’

‘Oh I was pussycat of the month all right while he was doing the portrait,’ continued Dennis, ‘all a-taunto I was. Then - when he’d got what he wanted - he told me to sod off.’

‘Denny! Another iced sombrero, Mr Barnaby?’

‘Thank you, no. And is the nanny, Miss Sharpe, still here?’

‘Mrs Sharpe. No. She went to live in Saint Leonards as soon as they could look after themselves. Glad to get out of it. They were about seventeen then, I think. She didn’t even drop in to say goodbye. I must say I was a bit hurt. I got her address off the Traces and wrote a couple of times but she didn’t reply. I sent a card at Christmas, then gave up.’ Frustration surfaced again. It was plain she would have preferred an extended farewell drama full of awful revelations. As she launched into a vivid description of one of the more spectacular domestic confrontations at Holly Cottage, Barnaby, nodding attentively from time to time, stretched his legs by strolling to the patio doors at the end of the room.

Outside the lawn was clear and sharp as glass. More flowering trees and shrubs and a pretty gazebo at the far end. He wondered how Mr Rainbird had made his pile. There must have been plenty of it, what with the bungalow, and Denny’s partnership and silver Dinky toy. Not to mention the tea trolley.

He turned back to the conversation. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. Although it was a warm day the radiators were full on. He looked at Dennis, batting his almost colourless eyelashes at Sergeant Troy, and wondered if he felt the cold. He certainly didn’t have any flesh to spare for insulation.

The room really was unbearably oppressive. It was crammed full of voluptuous showy furniture. And there were cabinets of china, mostly Capo di Monte, and shelves of dolls dressed in differing national costumes, plus several original deeply awful paintings. The one nearest to Barnaby showed a cocker spaniel in - he peered disbelievingly closer - floods of tears. The whole shebang was what his daughter would have called twentieth-century grotesque.

‘Thank you so much, Mrs Rainbird.’ He stemmed the tide, courteous but firm.

‘Not at all, Mr Barnaby.’ She flung a dazzling arc in his direction. He could not avoid shaking hands. It was like seizing a lump of dough. ‘What are we here for if not to help each other?’

As the two policemen walked down the drive Sergeant Troy said, ‘Men like that ought to be castrated.’ When Barnaby did not reply he tacked an ameliatory ‘sir’ on the end, adding, ‘as for his mother ... nothing but a spiteful old gasbag.’

‘Mrs Rainbird and folks like her are a godsend in any investigation, Troy. Just don’t mistake gossip for facts. And when they give you what they say are facts, always check them thoroughly. And don’t come to early conclusions. An open mind, Sergeant, an open mind.’

‘Yes, sir.’

They made their way to Burnham Crescent and council house number seven, the home of Mrs Quine.

As Barnaby and Troy passed through the space in the sour and dusty hedge flanked with rotten gate posts, Mrs Rainbird and her son closed the door of Tranquillada and turned to each other, alight with excitement.

‘Did you get it?’

‘Mummy - I did.’

‘Ohhh ... where ... where?’

‘Wait a minute. You haven’t said ...’

‘You’re a good boy. Now - show me.’

‘No.’ His face, an unpleasant orange colour beneath the hall lantern, became closed and stubborn. ‘That wasn’t properly. You’ve got to do it properly.’

‘You’re a goodboy,’ she crooned, kissing him full on the mouth. Her breath was very sweet, a soft explosion of violet cachous and cream and rich vanilla. ‘Mummysbestboy.’ Her fingers slipped into his shirt, caressing the bony wings of his shoulder blades. ‘Bestestonlyboy.’

He licked her ear with its dropping cluster of rhinestones. ‘Mmmm.’ His breathing quickened. ‘Clever Denny.’

‘Now’ - she took his hand, leading him down the corridor towards the french windows and the garden - ‘show me ...’

‘I want to play some more.’

‘Later we’ll play.’

‘All sorts of things?’

‘Everything. Come on ... where is it?’

They stepped out on to the lawn. Behind the gazebo was a large dark pile of something dripping wet, the water seeping out on to the bright green grass in concentric rings. Dennis led his mother up to it proudly. Hand in hand they gazed down. Mrs Rainbird’s eyes shone.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘In the pond behind the beechwoods. I saw them throw it in tied round some stones.’

She made no reply; just breathed out, a long slow contented hiss.

‘My mo-mo’s all wet. I had to put it in the boot, you see.’

‘We’ll buy you another one.’

‘Oh Mummy ...’ Ecstatically excited, he squeezed her arm. ‘Do you think it’s worth a lot, then?’

‘Oh yes, my dear.’ She took a step forward and poked the sodden mass with the toe of her shoe. ‘A very great deal. A very great deal indeed.’

Chapter Five

The garden of number seven was a tip. Literally. There was a small pyramid of junk teetering up against the side of the house. Bed frames, broken prams, old boxes, rusty iron chains and a large splintering rabbit hutch. The curtains downstairs were tightly closed. Barnaby rattled the letter box. Somewhere in the house a child was crying. He heard a woman scream, ‘Shut it, Lisa Dawn.’ Then, ‘Wait a minute can’t you?’ Thinking this might apply to him he waited.

Eventually Mrs Quine appeared. She was a thin woman with a concave chest and a cluster of red spots around her mouth. She was smoking and had an air of constant movement even when standing still, as if she had just been wound up and was raring to go.

‘Come in.’ She stepped back as they entered. ‘My neighbour said you were going round everybody.’

The room they entered was thick with smoke and dimly lit with a centre light, a wooden chandelier with parchment galleon shades. The television was blaring loudly. Mrs Quine made no move to turn it down. The room was untidy and not very clean. A little girl was sitting at a plastic table, sniffling and snuffling.

‘Now look who’s come, Lisa Dawn.’ The child looked across at Barnaby. ‘Told you I’d get a policeman if you warn’t a good girl.’ More tears. ‘Look what she’s done, Mr Policeman.’ Mrs Quine seized a dark wet object from the table. ‘Her Baby Jesus Pop-Up Book. Only had it Christmas. Blackcurrant everywhere.’ She opened the book. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and a clutch of assorted beasts rose up from the page, richly and symbolically empurpled. ‘Nothing’s new for five minutes in this house.’

‘Oh I’m sure it was an accident.’ Barnaby smiled at Lisa Dawn, who knuckled her eyes sadly and sniffed again. He turned to Mrs Quine who was now pacing briskly around the room sucking violently on her cigarette and flicking the ash about. ‘I have to be on the go,’ she explained.

‘I understand that you worked for Miss Simpson?’

‘That’s right. There and Tye House. I worked for old Clanger an’ all. Only for a week though. She said I could do what I liked as long as I never moved anything. Well how can you clean without moving anything? You tell me.’

‘That would be Miss Bellringer?’

‘Right.’

‘Did you turn up as usual the morning Miss Simpson died?’

‘Course I did. No reason not to was there? Miss B. was keeping an eye through the window. She came out and told me. You can sit down if you want.’

‘Pardon? Oh - thank you.’ Barnaby sat on the edge of a black vinyl settee. One of the cushions was disgorging multicoloured foam chips through a razored slit.

‘She gave me a cup of tea in case I felt bad. Then I went on to Tye House.’

‘It must have been a shock?’

‘It was an’ all. The doctor’d only been a few days before. She’d had a bit of bronchial trouble but he reckoned if she took good care she was all right for another ten years.’ Mrs Quine lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old. ‘Course we know why she went now, don’t we? Bloody rapists. There was one on the telly the other night in full view. I know what

I’d do to them.’ She settled briefly on the fireguard, throwing her stub into the empty grate. Her foot drummed furiously on the carpet. She inhaled with such force that the flesh beneath her cheekbones fell away into great hollows. ‘Poor old gel. At her age an’ all.’

Forbearing to comment on this wild bit of embroidery, Barnaby asked if Miss Simpson had been all right to work for.

‘Oh yes ... she liked everything just so but I knew her ways. We got on OK.’

‘And Tye House?’

She gave a gratified smile, showing glacially perfect false teeth. ‘Been round there, have you?’ When Barnaby nodded she continued, ‘Laugh a minute there, ’ent it? Old Phyllis Cadell hanging on for grim death. You could see the way the wind was blowing there all right. Grooming herself for the situation vacant, warn’t she? Worked her drawers off even when Mrs Trace were alive. Making herself indispensable - so she thought. You should’ve seen her after the accident. Trying to look sorry when anyone was about. Sorry! She was tickled to death. You could see what she thought would happen. Then Miss Great Britain from Holly Cottage starts popping in and out and swaps the jackpot. I thought Miss Cadell was going to chuck herself under the nearest bus the morning the engagement was announced. It made my day, I can tell you.’

‘To return to last Friday, Mrs Quine ... were you in the village hall during the afternoon?’

‘Me? Mucking in with that lot? You’ve got to be joking. Women’s Institute? Load of cowing snobs. They can stuff their flower arrangements. And their bloody walnut pickle.’

‘You were at home, then?’

‘Yes. Watching the telly. Weren’t we, Lisa Dawn? All afternoon. Except she ran up the shop for some crisps.’ Barnaby looked at Lisa Dawn, whose thin legs dangled at least eighteen inches from the floor. Reading the look, Mrs Quine continued, ‘She’s ever so good crossing the road. And she always comes straight back. She’s a big girl, ’ent you, Lisa Dawn? Tell the nice policeman how old you are.’

‘Nearly four,’ whispered the little girl.

‘You are four. She’s a good four,’ insisted Mrs Quine, as if the child were a pair of shoes. ‘And who bought you some sweeties in the shop?’

‘Judy.’

‘Auntie Judy. That’s Doctor Lessiter’s daughter. She often treats her. Bought her an egg at Easter, full of rabbits.’ Lisa Dawn started to cry. ‘Oh God - shut up can’t you? What’ll the gentlemen think? I shouldn’t have said that ... about the egg. The dog next door got off his chain and had her rabbit.’

‘Poor Smokey.’

‘All right, all right. We’ll get you another.’

‘What time was it when your daughter went to the shop?’

‘Dunno exactly. We was watching Sons and Daughters so it must’ve been gone three.’

‘And this was definitely the afternoon of the seventeenth?’

‘Told you, haven’t I?’ She lit a third cigarette.

‘And you were in all that evening?’

‘Can’t go anywhere with her.’

‘Thank you.’ Whilst Troy read the pro-forma back and Mrs Quine inhaled and tapped her feet and sighed, Barnaby tried to talk to Lisa Dawn but she shrank back in her chair and would not look at him. Bluish black marks, pretty as pansies, flowered along her inner arms. Before they had passed again between the rotten gate posts Barnaby heard her start to cry.

Barnaby switched on the fan in his office and asked for some coffee and a sandwich from the canteen. Before leaving to fetch them Policewoman Brierley said, ‘I’ve put a message underneath your clip, sir. A Miss Bazely. She left her office number and asked if you’d ring.’

Barnaby lifted up the phone and dialled. The blue propellers of the fan, whilst making an efficient whirring sound, did no more than shift the warm air in a sluggish stream past his perspiring face. ‘Miss Bazely? Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby here.’

‘Oh yes ... hullo ... you know when we talked the other day and I thought there was something I hadn’t told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I’ve remembered what it was. I’ll tell you now shall I?’

‘Yes please.’

‘I was in High Wycombe yesterday with my sister. I’m going to be her bridesmaid next month, you see, and we went to try on my dress. The shop’s quite near the station actually, which means you can sometimes squeeze the car in - not for long of course - and it’s called Anna Belinda. And that’s what Miss Simpson said. Well, nearly.’

‘Do you remember exactly?’

‘Yes I do. She said, “Just like poor Annabella.”’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Not simply Bella?’

‘No. It was definitely Annabella.’

Barnaby replaced the phone and sat staring at it thoughtfully. His sandwich (chicken and watercress) arrived, and some delicious coffee from the office hotplate. Barnaby took it saying, ‘Give the Social Services a ring, would you? I think someone should call at seven Burnham Crescent, Badger’s Drift.’

‘What shall I say, sir?’

‘Ohh ... possible child abuse. The woman’s name is Quine. She needs help too. On the verge of a breakdown, I would say. And if you could get on to Slough. I need the address and number of a Mrs Norah Whiteley. She’s a domestic science teacher. One son aged nine.’ He took a ravenous bite of his sandwich, reducing it by half, picked up the receiver and dialled again.

‘Miss Bellringer? Do you happen to know if your friend knew anyone called Annabella?’ There was a longish pause then a negative reply. ‘It wouldn’t perhaps be Mrs Trace?’

‘Oh no ... her name was Beatrice. She called herself Bella because she thought it was more glamorous.’

‘But did Miss Simpson know this?’

‘She did indeed. I remember her saying to me what a mistake it was. She thought Beatrice a beautiful name. And Bella rather common.’ She paused for breath. ‘There was an Isabella in my music class years ago. An immaculate child. I believe she’s now a deaconess. Is that any help?’

Barnaby thanked her and said goodbye. He had forgotten for the moment that Miss Simpson had been a teacher for over forty years. The chances were that, even given the comparative rarity of the name, one or two Annabellas may have passed through her hands, swanking brightly amongst the mousey Jeans and Joans and Junes and Janes. But then Miss Simpson’s recollection of the name had been triggered by the sight of a fornicating couple. How young had they started having it away twenty, thirty, forty years ago? Probably, he reflected, about as young as they did now. Some things never changed.

And why poor Annabella? He took another swig of his coffee and watched, out of the corner of his eye, an abseilling spider swing back and forth. Had she been destitute? Depraved? Dead? Barnaby thought of all the characters an eighty-year-old woman could have met with in a long and fairly well-travelled life. And heard about. And read about. He sighed, took another bite of his sandwich and faced the facts. Annabella could be practically anybody.

‘Something I can do, sir?’ asked Troy.

‘Yes.’ Barnaby emptied his mug. ‘You can run me over to the Echo. I want to read the account of Bella Trace’s death.’

‘You don’t think there’s any connection?’

‘I don’t think anything at this stage. But it’s an unnatural death in the same small area involving a circle of people whom we must now regard as suspect. It can’t be overlooked. So finish your tea and look sharp about it.’

In a basement beneath the offices of the Causton Weekly Echo Barnaby spoke to an old man who seemed as much a fixture of the place as the ancient green filing cabinets and rusty water pipes writhing over the back wall. There was a huge boiler too, now unlit and quiet.

Barnaby asked to see the editions for September and October the previous year. The old man shuffled off to the files and shuffled back. He didn’t speak or even remove the loosely wrapped unlit cigarette from his mouth. A few shreds of ginger tobacco fell on the newspapers as he handed them over. Barnaby took them to a reading stand by the window. The light was poor, the panes being of thick cobbled glass the colour of milk laced with whisky. To the accompaniment of a variety of overhead footsteps he flicked through the first two copies. The inquest on the death of Mrs Bella Trace was in the third. It was reported extensively and took up over half a page.

The shooting party had been a small one as these things go. Henry Trace, David Whiteley (who was described in a delicately worded if unnecessary addendum as assisting Mr Trace), Doctor T. Lessiter, friend of Mr Trace and also his personal physician, Mrs Trace, Miss Phyllis Cadell and two neighbouring landowners George Smollett and Frederick Lawley. Plus two beaters: Jim Burnet, a farm boy, and Michael Lacey, a young friend of the family.

Mrs Trace was apparently a few yards away from the main party when the accident occurred. As always on these occasions the accounts were confused and sometimes contradictory. Doctor Lessiter thought she had stumbled and was actually falling when the shot ran out, implying that she had tripped and fallen over her gun. She had already stumbled once over a tree root. The doctor admitted that this earlier incident might have contributed to his view of Mrs Trace’s death. Michael Lacey said the shot came first but, after being questioned closely by the coroner, seemed less sure. The rest of the group noticed nothing until Mrs Trace was seen to be lying on the ground. Mr Trace, desperate to get to his wife, wrenched his wheelchair round too quickly and tipped it over. The dogs were rushing everywhere; all was confusion. Michael Lacey, nearest to Mrs Trace at the time, ran to the spot but was instructed by the doctor not to touch the injured woman but to run and phone for an ambulance.

Giving evidence, Doctor Lessiter said that Mrs Trace was dying even as he reached her. There was nothing anyone could have done. She did not speak but lost consciousness almost immediately and died a few moments later. There were some technical post-mortem details describing the angle at which the shot had entered the heart and left the body, splintering one of the vertebrae. The point was made both by Doctor Lessiter and Mr Trace that, at the time of the accident, all the other members of the party with the exception of Jim Burnet had been either behind or to the left of Mrs Trace and therefore could not have fired the fatal shot. Jim, although ahead, had been a good thirty yards to her right. Although both beaters had returned later, on Mr Trace’s instructions, to search for the shot it had, not unnaturally given the dense surrounding woodland, remained unfound. The coroner expressed his condolences to the bereaved man and issued a verdict of Accidental Death.

Barnaby read the report again. It was very clearly written, everything seemed quite straightforward, yet there was something bothering him. Something buried in there that didn’t seem quite right.

He returned three of the papers to the desiccated old man - who seemed even less interested to have them back than he was to part with them in the first place - and showed his warrant card. ‘I’d like a photostat of this report,’ he said, drawing a rapid circle around the details of the inquest.

‘’Ere!’ The remains sparked inadvertently to life. ‘You can’t do that. That’s from the files!’

‘Is it?’ Barnaby looked at the circle severely and shook his head. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to and that’s a fact. By four o’clock if that’s all right with you.’

Chapter Six

The chief inspector noticed as Troy drove down Church Lane that Beehive Cottage already had a faintly neglected air, like that of a recently abandoned shell. The edging plants were straggling over the path, the curtains hung straight and still. On the wall outside Miss Bellringer’s house Wellington lay, swiping at and occasionally consuming passing butterflies.

Opposite the layby where the houses ended a wooden sign said: Gessler Tye: One Mile. The track was quite wide and tyre marks were clearly visible. Barnaby indicated that they should drive down and Troy eased the car carefully between the edges.

‘Good job we’re not in the Rover, sir.’

‘If we were in the Rover,’ snapped Barnaby, ‘I’d hardly be asking you to attempt it, would I?’ His chicken and watercress sandwich had met with and was being vanquished by Mrs Rainbird’s monstrously calorific spread. And he had left his tablets in the office.

‘Suppose you wouldn’t, sir.’ Sergeant Troy thought Barnaby was a good name for someone who was always behaving like a bear with a sore head, and pictured himself in some years’ time cutting his own sergeant down to size. He drove through a gap in the hedge which opened out into a large piece of roughly levelled ground and parked. Both men got out.

Creepy, thought Troy at his first sight of Holly Cottage. It was grey and austere, squatting on the very edge of the wood like a humped toad. In spite of the warmth of the day he shivered. You could imagine a witch crawling out of there all right and gobbling up Hansel and Gretel. Really Grimm. He smirked a little at his cleverness, wondered whether to relay this witticism to Barnaby, and decided against it. Things were fraught enough today as it was.

Then, as they approached the porch, the sun came out, striking the south-facing wall. The flints caught fire, glowing with the most subtle colours. Barnaby touched one. It was like a huge boiled sweet, all toffee-brown and cream striations. He knocked on the door. No reply.

He noticed a honeysuckle then, almost at his feet, small and struggling in a rank clump of nettles. Perhaps the girl had planted it, weeding the ground, watering, no doubt hoping that it would eventually climb all over the porch. Two flowers had opened against all the odds. It looked like a Serotina.

‘Let’s try the back.’

Behind the house was a small concrete yard, many more nettles, a water butt greenly stagnant with a thick crust of slime and three black plastic bags suppurating with rubbish. There were also two small windows, the panes filmed with dust. Barnaby rubbed at one and peered through.

A man wearing a blue shirt and corduroy jeans stained with paint was standing at an easel. He had his back to the window. He seemed to be working feverishly, the brush shifting from palette to canvas and back again in sharp, almost stabbing movements.

‘He must have heard us, sir.’

‘Oh I don’t know. People in the throes of creation ... he’s probably miles away.’

Sergeant Troy sniffed. The idea that painting made you deaf was not one that he was prepared to countenance. He had no time for what he called the arty-farty element who contributed nothing whatever of value to society and then expected to be paid good money for it. Barnaby rapped on the window.

Immediately the man swung round. There was a blur of movement, a white face quickly turned away, and he almost ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. Barnaby heard a key turn then walked quickly back to the front of the house. He and Troy arrived in the porch just as Michael Lacey opened the door.

He was only slightly taller than his sister and enough like her to make the relationship unmistakable. The same deep violet eyes, the same dark hair cut very short and curling tightly all over his well-shaped head. He had neat small ears set rather far back which, coupled with the wide-set eyes, gave him a slightly dangerous look, like that of a wicked horse.

Remembering Mrs Rainbird’s remark about the iron, Barnaby was expecting to see some dramatic and livid mutilation but, at first glance, Michael Lacey’s face seemed completely unmarked. Then Barnaby noticed that from the top of the left cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth the skin was unnaturally tight; glassy sugar-pig pink skin. It must have been some burn to have needed a graft that size. As well as good looks (which the strangely shining strip of skin hardly seemed to mar) he exuded crackling sardonic masculinity. Not warmth, though. Michael Lacey would organize the world and its inhabitants to suit himself. Barnaby felt sorry for Judy Lessiter. And even, come to that, for the repellent Mr Rainbird.

He said, ‘May we come in for a moment?’

‘What do you want?’

‘We’re police officers -’

‘So you’re police officers. What am I supposed to do? Run up a flag?’

‘We’re visiting everyone in the village -’

‘I don’t live in the village. I’m amazed that your deductive powers have led you to believe that I do.’

‘- and the surrounding area. This is quite usual, Mr Lacey, during a general -’

‘Look. I’m sorry about Miss Simpson. I liked her. But I take no part in village affairs, as any of the local gossips will confirm. And now you’ll have to excuse me -’

‘We won’t keep you a moment, sir.’ Barnaby moved forward very slightly and Michael Lacey stepped back very slightly, just enough to let the two men enter the cottage. Uncarpeted stairs were directly to the left of him and he sat on them, leaving the other two standing.

‘Did you know Miss Simpson well?’

‘I don’t know anyone well. She let me do a series of paintings of her garden ... different times of the year ... but that was ages ago. I hadn’t seen her for ... ohh ... a couple of months at least.’ He gazed at the chief inspector, alert, detached, a little amused, deciding to treat this enforced interruption as an entertainment.

‘Could you tell me where you were on the afternoon and evening of last Friday?’

‘Here.’

‘Well that’s certainly a prompt reply, Mr Lacey. Don’t you need to reflect at all?’

‘No. I’m always here. Working. Sometimes I take a break to walk in the woods.’

‘And did you walk in the woods that day?’ inquired Barnaby.

‘I may have done. I really don’t remember. As all my days are the same I don’t need to keep a diary.’

‘It seems rather a dull life for a young man.’

Michael Lacey looked at his bare feet. They were beautiful feet: long, narrow, elegant, with papery skin and fine bones. Byzantine feet. Then he looked directly at Barnaby and said, ‘My work is my life.’ He spoke quietly but with such a charge of passionate conviction that Barnaby, dabbler in watercolours, casual member of the Causton Arts Circle, felt a stab of envy. He then told himself that conviction didn’t mean talent, as many an exposure to Joyce’s drama group had confirmed. Armed with this rather churlish perception, he said, ‘There are one or two more questions, Mr Lacey, if you wouldn’t mind -’

‘But I do mind. I hate being interrupted.’

‘I understand,’ continued Barnaby smoothly, ‘that you were present when the late Mrs Trace was killed.’

‘Bella?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Yes I was but I can’t see ...’ He paused. ‘You don’t think there’s any connection ... ?’ His previous animosity seemed forgotten. He looked genuinely interested. ‘No ... how could there be?’

‘I gather from the newspaper report that you were the first person to reach Mrs Trace.’

‘That’s right. Lessiter said not to touch her but to run and ring for an ambulance, which I did.’

‘Was there anyone at Tye House at the time?’

‘Only Katherine. Toadying away like mad.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In the kitchen making sandwiches, stuffing vol au vents, chopping up hunter’s pie.’

‘Whilst you were helping with the beating.’

‘That’s different. I was being paid!’ Barnaby’s dig stung the anger back into his voice. He confirmed that no one in the party had been in a position to shoot Mrs Trace, then said, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me. I didn’t even have a gun.’

‘I understand that you and the other beater searched for the cartridge afterwards?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that. We had a cursory poke round but it seemed so pointless that we soon gave up.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lacey.’

As the two policemen climbed into the car Troy, remembering his earlier gaffe about the Rover, strove to think of something perceptive and intelligent to say. ‘Did you notice that he locked the door of the room where he was painting? I thought that was a bit strange.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Creative people often have an intensely protective attitude about work in progress. Look at Jane Austen’s creaking door.’

Sergeant Troy reversed, using a large, double-sided mirror which had been fixed in the hedge, giving a view of the approaching path and the front of the cottage. ‘That’s a point, sir,’ he replied. There was no way he was going to let on he knew nothing of Jane Austen’s creaking door. As for Michael Lacey being love’s young dream, well ... He glanced in the mirror and briefly smoothed his carrot-coloured hair. Surely it was only in romantic novels that girls preferred dark men.

Michael Lacey watched from the porch while the car drove away then returned to his studio. He picked up his palette and brush, stared at the easel for a moment, then put them down again. The light was dying. In spite of the recent interruption he had had a good day. Sometimes he worked in a fury of resentment; tearing up sketches, painting over scenes that would not come right in a frenzy, occasionally weeping with rage. But days like that paid for days like this. From the striving came, sometimes, a marvellous and felicitous ease. He studied the figure in the painting. There was still a lot to do. He had put on the dead colour, that was all. But he was excited by it. He had the absolute conviction that it was going to be successful. It was tremendous when that happened. The belief that, no matter what he did, how he approached it, whatever the technique, it was going to work. His conviction was so strong that he felt he couldn’t spoil it even if he tried.

He went to the kitchen and opened a can of baked beans and sausages and, spooning them into his mouth, returned to his workroom. The fading light appeared to alter the shape of the place, made the walls shifting and amorphous. Four vast abstracts covered with thick white paint loomed at him from a few feet away. In the corner of each was a dark, imploding star, now no more than a smudge in the crepuscular light.

On top of the corner cupboard was an old-fashioned pewter student’s lamp. He lit the candle and wandered round the room looking at the many canvases stacked against the walls. Although there was a strong fluorescent strip light on the ceiling Michael Lacey loved the effect of candles. Colours on the paintings became richer, many-layered; eyes seemed to flicker and mouths twitch with the illusion of light. Solid flesh was transformed into something rare and delicate. The effect was stimulating and seemed to fill his mind with wonderful and subtle ideas.

In the corner cupboard was a pile of paperbacks and art catalogues, all well thumbed, the spines cracked and, in some cases, broken. He pulled one out at random and sat contemplating a plate by Botticelli. How seductive, he thought, the tender vivacious faces adorned with fresh spring flowers. He finished the beans and sat for a moment longer utterly content, imagining himself walking round the Uffizi, standing in homage in front of the original. Then he opened the window, threw up the tin and kicked it, a shining arc, through the window and into the night.

Chapter Seven

Late that evening Barnaby sat toying with a salad. He had deliberately stayed on at the station, looking through the pro-formas as they appeared in his tray, until he felt dinner would be beyond redemption and a tin opened with no hard feelings. He had forgotten there were such things as tomatoes and cucumber and beetroot ...

One would have thought that not even Joyce could have maltreated a salad to the point where it became inedible, but one would have been wrong. Abustle with wild life, it was also soaked in a vinegary dressing. Barnaby lifted a soggy lettuce leaf. A small insect emerged, valiantly swimming against the tide.

‘It’s Bakewell Surprise for afters,’ she called from the kitchen, doubly percipient. He was hungry too. This last phenomenon always surprised him. It was rather touching, really: no matter how much stick he gave his stomach there it was, a few hours later, hopeful if apprehensive, wondering if this time its luck would change.

‘And Cully’s coming next weekend.’ She gave him the tart, a cup of tea and a fond kiss. ‘All right?’

‘Lovely. How long for?’

‘Just till Sunday teatime.’

Barnaby and Joyce looked at each other. They both loved and were immensely proud of their only child. And they both thought it much nicer when she was not at home. Neither of them ever said so. Even when quite small Cully had had a sharp eye and an unkind tongue. Both had become more finely honed with the passing years. Outstanding at school, she was now reading English at New Hall and confidently expected to get a good second in spite of the fact that she seemed to Barnaby to spend all her time rehearsing some play or other.

‘Will you be able to pick her up on Saturday?’

‘Not sure.’ Barnaby put his Bakewell Surprise to the sword, which was more than it deserved, and wondered what his daughter would be next seen wearing. She had always dressed in a provoking manner but he and Joyce had assumed, seeing her off on the Cambridge train, that the days of dishcloth and safety-pin skirts and tie and dye makeup were over (indeed they half expected her to be sent smartly home again) but each brief and infrequent visit since had presented them with ever more exotic and alarming transformations. The nice thing about these occasions was that having left home, as she put it, whilst she still had her health and strength, Cully protected these twin assets by always arriving with a goodly supply of gorgeous food from Marks and Spencers and Joshua Taylor’s deli.

‘You won’t forget to ring your father?’

Barnaby took his tea and sat by the fireplace. As he had been ringing his parents once a week for a quarter of a century he’d hardly be likely to. They were both in their eighties and had retired to just outside Eastbourne twenty years before. There they inhaled the ozone, played bowls and gardened, as spry as tinkers.

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Do it now before you settle down.’

‘I have settled down.’

‘Then you can enjoy your tea.’

Barnaby dutifully hauled himself out of his chair. His mother answered the phone and, after a token inquiry about his own health and that of his family, launched into an account of her week which included a splendid row at the Arts Circle when a nonagenarian had suggested a life class. She ended, as she always did, by saying, ‘I’ll just call Daddy.’

Barnaby senior then described his week which had included a splendid row at a meeting of the preservation society over a Victorian bandstand. What a bellicose lot they were down there, thought Barnaby who, when his parents had moved, had pictured them passing their hours dozing peacefully in their conservatory. A rather unsound piece of image-making, he now admitted. They had never been the dozing kind. His father finished describing how he had finally scuppered an unscrupulous opponent on the bowling green.

Barnaby listened patiently then said, almost as an afterthought, ‘Never mind. We’re in the middle of the cricket season. I expect you’re glued to the set most days.’

‘Certainly am. Rented one of those video gadgets. Play back the best bits. Terrible about Friday, wasn’t it?’

Barnaby smiled indulgently. His father must know that he was never around in the daytime to watch cricket, yet always assumed he knew exactly what was being discussed.

‘What happened?’

‘Why, no match, dear boy. Not enough light. The umpire offered Allenby the option and he decided to stop play. Eleven ack-emma. Everything was ready this end. Cucumber sandwiches, jug of mint tea. Settled in for the duration. We were totally distraught. Well, to be honest, your mother wasn’t too bothered but it did for my day, I can tell you.’

After due commiserations Barnaby returned to his armchair and a fresh cup of tea. ‘People have started lying to me, Joyce.’

‘Oh yes, dear ...’ The pale silky knitting grew. ‘In this business at Badger’s Drift, you mean?’

‘Mm. Katherine Lacey was seen in the village during the evening she said she didn’t go out. Judy Lessiter said she was at work all afternoon and was seen in the village shop at half-past three. Trevor Lessiter said he was at home watching cricket ... “superb bowling” ... and the match was cancelled. And Phyllis Cadell went rigid with fright when she saw us, then tried to cover it by some silly story about her road tax.’

‘Goodness ... that seems plenty to be going on with.’ The names meant nothing to Joyce Barnaby and she knew Tom was really only thinking aloud, getting his thoughts into some sort of order. She listened intently all the same.

‘And Barbara Lessiter, the esteemed doctor’s wife, had something in this morning’s mail that turned her white as a sheet.’

‘How do you know?’ Barnaby told her. ‘Oh - it’s probably a final demand. I expect she’s been buying clothes and run up a terrible bill somewhere.’

‘No.’ Barnaby shook his head. ‘It was something more than that. And where was she the night Emily Simpson died? Driving round. Very vague.’

‘But innocent people are vague. They don’t always have alibis. Or know precisely what they were doing and when. You’ve always said that. What was she doing in the afternoon?’

‘Shopping in Causton.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Joyce, irrefutably. ‘She’s been overspending.’

Barnaby smiled across at her, drained his cup and replaced it in the saucer. Something told him that it was not that simple. That none of it was going to be that simple.

Chapter Eight

Next morning, the day before the inquest was due to be reconvened, Barnaby got to his office early and settled down for a rapid read-through of pro-formas, statements and reports. The gist of these would later be transferred to a rotating card system (they were still waiting for a computer). He called for some coffee and began.

He read fast and skilfully, seizing on tiny details, passing quickly over the mundane and merely repetitious. The result was pretty much as he had expected. The only males in the village not at work on the afternoon of the seventeenth or at home with their wives were two unemployed men who spent the time on their respective allotments in full view of each other. The vicar had been in his study working on next week’s sermon. A fact confirmed by his housekeeper who had been making jam in the kitchen and was highly indignant that the vicar, a frail old party of seventy-three, should have been questioned at all. In the evening the men were either at home with their families or in the Black Boy. Policewoman Brierley brought in the coffee and Barnaby took it gratefully.

The women of Badger’s Drift also seemed to be accounted for. Some were out at work. The old ones at home. The rest (with the exception of Mrs Quine) in the village hall preparing for the morrow. The young women who had left the hall in plenty of time for a quick frolic in the bracken had all met their children off the school bus and gone home to a blameless tea. In the evening three carloads had gone to Causton for a keep-fit class and the rest had stayed at home. Assuming that the couple in the woods were inhabitants of the village, which Barnaby was still inclined to do, the circle of suspects was very small indeed.

He finished his coffee, noting with some surprise, as the liquid went down, the gradual emergence of a green frog wearing a friendly smile and a straw boater, and playing a banjo. He turned to the scene-of-crime reports.

There were not many surprises. The larder window had been forced and traces of white paint were on the inside shelf. There was not, alas, the weather being dry, a lump of mud with the pattern of a shoe sole clearly visible. No fingerprints on the piecrust table, the hemlock-filled jar, garden trowel, door handles and all the other places one would expect to find fingerprints. And none on the telephone - which was strange, as the last person to handle that should have been Doctor Lessiter. And what reason would he have for wiping it clean? The pencil mark on the copy of Julius Caesar was a 6B. Not perhaps as common as some but hardly a vanishing species. The pencil had not been found. Elimination tests showed that any prints belonged either to the deceased or to Miss Lucy Bellringer.

He skimmed the second report again briefly but he had missed very little the first time. A search for the rug was in progress but Barnaby was not optimistic. Anyone who was so punctilious over fingerprints would hardly leave the thing lying around in the back of a car or flung over a sofa. Of course it was hardly common knowledge that the fibres of a rug had been found and not everyone knew that semen stains were as conclusive as fingerprints. The police might just be lucky. Troy opened the door.

‘Car ready when you are, Chief.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Sergeant Troy, turning off the Gessler Tye road towards Badger’s Drift, ‘that could’ve been arse bandits in the woods. You know ... gay.’ There could not have been more venom in the last word if the couple had been seen devouring children.

This was the fifth suggestion he had made in the last ten minutes, all scrupulously punctuated with ‘sirs’. He was very free with his ‘sirs’, was Troy. You couldn’t fault him on etiquette. Nor on discipline. Sergeant Troy played it by the book. He passed his exams with room to spare, his reports were models of concise yet comprehensive information. He was without the silly romanticism that lured so many men and women into the force and also without the rather watery compassion that usually evaporated when confronted by their first one hundred per cent amoral, ruthlessly proficient, frequently armed villain. Especially he was without the compassion. He was about to chirp up again. Really, thought the chief inspector, with a more likable personality you could have called him irrepressible.

Before Troy could speak Barnaby said, ‘That had occurred to me as well but, as far as we know, only Dennis Rainbird fits that description. I checked with his partner and he definitely didn’t leave work until quarter to five on the Friday. Also there seems to be no reason why he should conceal any such relationship. It’s no longer against the law.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Troy, adding, with unusual percipience, ‘I bet his mother would be jealous, though.’ Then, ‘Shan’t we be a bit early for the Lessiter girl?’

‘It’s her half day.’

‘Oh my God!’ Sergeant Troy slammed on the brakes. The car screamed to a stop. Barnaby pitched forward, saved from a collision with the windscreen by his belt. A figure had leapt out from behind the village post box almost directly in their path. Barnaby wound the window down and spoke through blanched lips.

‘It’s really not a good idea, Miss Bellringer—’

‘How fortuitous.’ She beamed at them. A faint scent of carnations and orris root pervaded the interior of the car. Before Barnaby could stop her she had opened the door, climbed in and disposed herself on the back seat. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘first and before I forget, the funeral’s tomorrow. Eleven-thirty. I don’t know if you wish to come?’

Barnaby murmured something noncommittal. Sergeant Troy dug out a packet of Chesterfields with trembling fingers.

‘And don’t do that in here, young man. You’ll put us all at risk.’ He dropped the cigarettes on his lap, leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘Now,’ she smiled sweetly at Barnaby, ‘tell me how you’re getting on with your disquisition. Are you any further forrard?’

‘We’re continuing our investigations.’

‘There’s no need to be so hoity-toity, Chief Inspector. After all if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have a case at all. And you did say I could help.’ She accompanied this outrageous lie with a shining glance, as clear and candid as a child’s. Before Barnaby could get his breath she added, ‘Have you spoken to that dreadful Mrs Rainbird?’

‘We have.’

‘What’s she say? Did she see anything?’

The chief inspector saw no need to conceal Mrs Rainbird’s revelations. No doubt they were all over the village by now. ‘She did see Miss Lacey that evening. Going out to post a letter.’

‘Hmmn.’ Miss Bellringer snorted. ‘That girl is far too beautiful for other people’s good. Look here - there’s no point in dancing around the mulberry bush. It’s pretty obvious to an old hand like myself why we’re all being questioned about the afternoon as well as the evening. Emily saw something in the woods and it’s my belief that what we’re talking about here is illicit passion.’ Her voice rang out, investing the words with positively Brontëan splendour. ‘To wit Katherine Lacey and her inamorato. It’s as plain as a horse’s tail. Can you imagine what discovery would have meant? No marriage, for a start. Henry might be besotted but he’s not that much of a fool. It would have been goodbye to Tye House and all that money and, incidentally, to an easily cuckolded spouse. Madly in love and confined to a wheelchair? Talk about a combination devoutly to be wished. She’d be able to do more or less as she liked. And there’s bad blood in that family. The father was no good. Drove his poor wife into her grave.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Old sins cast long shadows.’ Barnaby was silent. ‘Did Mrs R see the girl coming back?’

‘Apparently not. She started playing Monopoly with her son.’

‘The slithy tove?’ Barnaby smiled appreciatively.

‘She did say Miss Lacey had one of the beagles with her.’

‘One of the beagles.’ Miss Bellringer seized his arm. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Mrs Rainbird’s sure.’

She crumpled back into her seat. Even her buoyant draperies, today trimmed with what looked like shredded beetroot, seemed to wilt. ‘Then our case collapses.’

‘Why is that?’ asked the chief inspector, letting the ‘our’ pass for the time being.

‘There was no noise from Benjy. He was good if a person he knew came to the door ... good as gold ... but let another dog as much as set foot in the garden and he went berserk. And I would certainly have heard him. Living so close.’

‘Perhaps Miss Lacey could have tied him up,’ suggested Troy, stimulated in spite of himself by the vitality of the narrative. ‘The beagle I mean.’

‘Hooo.’ A sound like a ship’s hooter. ‘You don’t know beagles. They won’t sit meekly down and wait while you go about your business. They’re a highly vociferous lot. If she’d tied him up the whole village would have known about it. No - not a dog barked, I’m sure. Ah well’ - she opened the right-hand door, knocking ten years off the life of a passing cyclist, and stepped smartly out - ‘we’ll have to think again. I’m loathe to part with the Laceys, mind you. What about the brother?’

‘The brother has no motive, Miss Bellringer. And now I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.’

‘If someone had wrung her neck I could understand it.’ Troy drew a deep, juddering breath as he drove off. ‘They just don’t care, do they? Your genuine eccentrics? They don’t care what you think.’

‘A genuine eccentric,’ replied Barnaby, ‘doesn’t even notice what you think.’ He added, ‘Keep an eye out for that dog,’ as Troy entered the cobbled yard of Tye House and parked, almost chastely and quite without his usual pizzaz, near the kitchen door. But the warning was unnecessary. Benjy did not come to meet them but lay on the step, very thin, his grey muzzle resting on his paws. His tail heaved off the ground and thumped up and down once or twice as he peered anxiously towards them. Like Ulysses’ hound he waited, faithful to the last.

‘Poor old boy,’ said the sergeant. ‘Good boy.’ He was about to stroke the dog but as he bent down Benjy turned his head and something in his eyes stayed Troy’s hand. ‘They should’ve had this dog seen to by now.’

Barnaby pointed to the far end of the lawn. ‘In the garden,’ he said. As the two men descended the steps between the stone urns brimming with flowers he felt a welcome breeze against his temples. It pressed the lemon voile of Katharine Lacey’s dress close against the slender curves of her body. She was standing behind Henry’s chair, her arms across his chest, her head close to his. As Barnaby approached she pointed to a nearby grove of poplars. Henry shook his head and they both laughed. Then she started to push the chair in Barnaby’s direction.

‘We’re going to have a hundred people here on Saturday, Inspector,’ called Trace. ‘Where do you think we should put the marquee?’

Spoilt for choice, really, thought Troy, in a garden that size. Still all the money in the world wouldn’t make his legs more lively. Imagine going down the aisle to a gorgeous piece of skirt like that in a wheelchair. He smiled confidently and said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lacey.’

‘Wherever we put it,’ she smiled at the two policemen, ‘it’s going to make a terrible mess.’

‘Oh grass soon recovers,’ replid Henry. ‘Are you a gardening man, Inspector Barnaby?’

Barnaby indicated that he was and asked if they’d come to any decision yet about the rosarium. This led to a lot of pleasant horticultural chat and to Henry describing his wedding gift for Katherine, which was nineteen old-fashioned moss and climbing roses: ‘A flower for each year of her life.’

‘Then we shall plant one on all our wedding anniversaries until we’re old and grey,’ said Katherine. ‘And that will be our rosarium.’

Barnaby let this amiable pool of conversation fill up for a while then dropped his stone. ‘Oh - a small point, Miss Lacey. When I spoke to you a few days ago I understood you to say that you spent the evening of the seventeenth here with Mr Trace.’

‘That’s right, I did.’

‘And you didn’t go out at all?’

‘No. We were here all the time.’

‘You were seen walking in the village.’

‘Me?’ She looked genuinely puzzled. ‘But I couldn’t have - Oh! Of course. I ran out to post a letter. D’you remember, darling? We said we’d order a Notcutt’s catalogue and I thought I’d do it straight away.’

‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to do that by telephone?’

‘They’re not free. You have to send a cheque.’

‘That would be their main branch at Woodbridge?’ She nodded. ‘Do you remember how long you were out?’

‘Not exactly. I just ran Peel to the end of Church Lane and home again. Surely,’ she added crisply, ‘whoever saw me going out saw me coming back?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Dear me. Sleeping at their post were they?’

‘You didn’t see anyone whilst you were out?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘You would support what Miss Lacey says, sir?’

‘Well ... I didn’t see Katherine leave—’

‘No, you dropped off after dinner. That’s the only reason I went just then, really.’

‘Yes. I often do these days,’ he smiled at Barnaby. ‘She was certainly here when I woke.’ As he was speaking two black and gold vans - ‘Lazenby et cie’ - crunched over the gravel and through the main gate.

‘It’s the caterers,’ cried Katherine. ‘I’d better go—’

‘Actually, Miss Lacey, I did want a further word ...’

‘Oh.’ She looked at her fiancé uncertainly.

‘Don’t worry - I’ll go.’ Henry Trace pushed himself away, making for the wooden ramp by the terrace steps. Katherine followed him slowly, Barnaby by her side, Troy bringing up a salivatory rear.

‘I wonder,’ said Barnaby, ‘if you remember the day Mrs Trace died?’

‘Bella? Of course I do.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘It’s not the kind of thing one forgets in a hurry. It was terrible.’

‘I understand that you were not a member of the party?’

‘No. I stayed here, preparing the tea. Usually Phyllis helped but on that day she went out with the shoot.’

‘That was unusual, was it?’

‘Very.’

‘So the first you knew about the tragedy ... ?’

‘Was when Michael came racing in, grabbed the phone and shouted down it for an ambulance.’

‘I see. Would you say ...’ - he hesitated, picking the words over carefully in his mind - ‘that Mr and Mrs Trace were happy?’

‘Well ... yes ... they always seemed so to me. Although of course outsiders never really know, do they? They were both very kind to Michael and myself. And Henry was absolutely distraught when she died.’

Barnaby turned and looked back over the line of poplars and wooded ground beyond. ‘Was it over there the accident happened?’

Katherine followed his gaze. ‘Oh no ... in the beechwoods that lie behind Holly Cottage.’

‘I see. Well, thank you again.’

They had reached the terraced steps by now and walked up them together. As they crossed the yard Benjy made a sound from the doorstep and staggered to his feet. Katherine turned away from the sight.

‘Oh, why won’t he eat!’ she burst out passionately to the two men. ‘I bought him everything - lovely meat, biscuits. He’s got his own basket and blanket and dish - everything he had over there ...’

‘They pine, I’m afraid,’ said Barnaby.

‘But you’d think they’d want to stay alive, however sad they are.’

‘He’s a pretty old dog, miss,’ said Troy sympathetically. ‘I think he’s just tired. He’s had enough.’

‘Are you through with Katherine, Chief Inspector? I really need her over here.’

‘Well - that’s that,’ sighed Barnaby a few moments later as they drove away. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope that Katherine Lacey and the Lessiter girl would have been wandering up and down Church Lane at the same time last Friday night.’

‘But ... you do believe her, sir?’ asked Troy, still a little dazed by the rainbow lustre of the Lacey smile. ‘About the letter?’

‘Oh yes. I’ll get it followed up of course but I’ve no doubt that she posted it when and where she says. If she’s innocent there’d be no point in making up such a story. And if she’s guilty she’d make doubly sure anything we could check on was genuine.’

‘Guilty.’ Troy unwisely took his eyes off the road to give Barnaby an incredulous glance and missed the opening to the Lessiters’ drive.

‘You really must give up this physiognomy, Troy. It can only hinder your career. She’s got more to lose than any of them.’

‘But the dog, sir. The dog didn’t bark.’

‘Yes, the dog’s a problem, I admit.’

Or perhaps the dog wasn’t a problem, he thought as Troy reversed and drove up to the Lessiters’ front door. Perhaps the dog meant he could score a line through Katherine Lacey once and for all. One down, six to go. Or seven if he kept a really open mind and included the seemingly impossible Henry Trace. What about if he had fallen hopelessly in love with Katherine when his wife was still alive and had hired someone to lurk in the undergrowth and pop Bella off? Barnaby dragged his attention back to the present and reminded himself yet again that he had no reason to suppose that Mrs Trace’s death was anything but an accident. And that he was in fact now engaged in investigating something quite different.

The doctor’s surgery still had fifteen minutes to run, which suited the chief inspector very well. Judy Lessiter opened the main door, looking even less attractive than she had the previous day. She had a frowsty air, like that of a small animal emerging after a long period of hibernation.

‘Yes.’

‘We’d like a word with your father—’

‘Surgery round the side.’ She started to close the door. Barnaby moved forward. ‘And with you also, please.’

She stared at him sullenly for a moment then shrugged and led them into the kitchen. She turned to face them, leaning against the sink.

‘Miss Lessiter, you told me earlier that you were in the library during the afternoon of the seventeenth.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘I’m sorry but I checked your statement before coming here.’

‘I said I was at work. I don’t stand behind a counter stamping books. Part of my job is to visit schools, technical colleges ... liaise with administrators, check if there are any projects that may mean ordering special books. On Friday afternoon I was at Gessler Tye primary school.’

‘I must say I feel that you have deliberately attempted to mislead us in this matter.’

‘That’s your problem,’ she said rudely.

‘So if you would go through your movements again?’

‘I take sandwiches for lunch. I ate them then—’

‘This is in the library at Pinner?’

‘Yes. Made some coffee. Drove to the school, arriving about two, and stayed till they finished around three forty-five. ’

‘And you then returned to the library?’

‘No. It hardly seemed worth it. I drove straight here ... stopping off at the village shop for some cigarettes.’

Jammy, thought Sergeant Troy, always convinced that everyone but himself, jobwise, was getting away with murder.

‘Your father will vouch for your time of arrival?’

‘My father?’ She looked puzzled, then wary.

‘He was here all afternoon, I understand.’

There was a pause while she looked from Barnaby to Sergeant Troy and back again. ‘Is it a trick?’

‘What?’

‘I mean ... are you trying to catch me out?’

‘I don’t understand you, Miss Lessiter. Your father has stated that he was at home all afternoon. I’m merely asking if he can corroborate your time of arrival.’

‘Well ... I went straight upstairs ... so ... I wouldn’t have seen him.’

‘I see. And the evening?’

‘Oh I’ve nothing to change there. I just went for a walk, as I’ve already said.’

‘Down the lane, past the fields for about half a mile, then back?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you didn’t stop anywhere or call on anyone?’ He added quickly before she could speak, ‘Please think very carefully before you answer.’

She stared at him. He looked serious, encouraging and, somehow, faintly knowledgeable. He could see she was wondering about the close re-questioning. ‘Well ... I’m not sure I remember ... exactly ...’ She swallowed and chewed her bottom lip.

‘I know how difficult it must be to change a story, but if you need to now’s the time to do it. I must remind you that withholding information that may assist a police inquiry is a very serious matter.’

‘Oh but I’m not! Nothing that would help, that is ...’

‘I think you should let me be the judge of that.’

‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. She stopped leaning on the sink and stood upright looking taut and fearful, like someone preparing for a high dive. ‘I have ... that is I’m friendly with Michael Lacey. At Holly Cottage. I hadn’t heard from him for a few days and ... well, he said he wanted to paint me so I thought I’d ... drop in ... you know, to see when he wanted to start.’ Barnaby listened sympathetically. In trying to sound casual she had simply underlined her desperation. ‘So I walked up to the house but when I got there ... I could see through the window that he was working—’

‘Which window was that?’

‘The front window by the porch.’

‘He doesn’t usually use that room, surely?’

‘Sometimes - in the evening. To get the last of the light.’

‘Ah, I see. Carry on.’

‘He gets very angry if he’s disturbed when he’s painting. He says it’s very hard to get back into the feel of it again. So I thought I’d better not ... well ... I just crept away.’

‘You think he didn’t know you were there?’

‘Oh I’m sure he didn’t. I was very quiet.’ She paused a moment then, looking at Barnaby for the first time, burst out, ‘You mustn’t believe what people say about Michael. They hate him here because he doesn’t care about things they all care about ... petty, boring things. He’s a free spirit! As long as he can paint and walk in the woods and look at the sky ... and he’s been so unhappy. Katherine’s so bourgeois - she only cares about material things - and now once the wedding’s over he’ll be all alone ...’ There was a clarion note of hope in the last few words. For a moment her eyes shone so brilliantly that her rather stodgy face was transformed. Barnaby saw for the first time why Michael Lacey might have asked her to sit for him. He glanced at the clock over the kitchen door. Judy, as if already regretting her passionate declamation, presented her back to them and turned on both the taps. She stood watching the water bouncing off the gleaming metal, hearing the two sets of footsteps move to the door and cross the hall. She reduced the water to a thin colourless stream. The front door closed. She switched the taps off.

Her hands trembled and she gripped the edge of the sink to still them. Talking about Michael always had this effect on her. Describing her abortive visit, her lack of courage and her humiliating retreat on tiptoe, had made her feel quite sick. But it had put the record straight, that was the main thing. She was glad about that. Especially after her silly attempt to be clever about her movements in the afternoon. Then she realized that her recent confession had brought about a secondary benefit. If Miss Simpson’s death had been due to foul play (and why else would there be all this questioning?) she had given Michael an alibi. He may well not care about this one way or the other but the fact could not be denied. She hugged this small service to her heart. Perhaps he would never know but it was something she could keep in reserve to be offered up if the right moment ever came.

She heard the click of the phone. It must be Barbara. Judy had been standing so very still and quiet for the past few minutes that her stepmother might have assumed she was in her room. Or in the garden. Because there was something so soft, almost furtive about that click. Judy crept on slippered feet across the vinyl tiles, step by careful step. Barnaby had left the door a little ajar and Judy stood looking through the crack.

Barbara had her back to the kitchen and was shielding the mouthpiece with her hand. Nevertheless her hoarse whisper made every word clearly audible.

‘Darling, I’m sorry but I had to ring. Didn’t you get my note? ... What d’you mean there’s nothing you can do? You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to ... You must have some money ... I’ve done that. I’ve sold everything that I thought he wouldn’t notice, even my coat ... No, it was being stored for the winter ... How the hell do I know what I’ll say? ... Three thousand and it cost him ten so I’m still nearly a thousand short. For God’s sake - I’m only in this mess because of you ... You bastard, it wasn’t me who said I was counting the hours - I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Darling? I’m sorry - don’t hang up! Please - you must help. It’ll be the end of everything here if he finds out. You don’t know what my life was like before. I’ll never go back to that. I’ll - hullo, hullo ... ?’

Feverishly she clicked at the receiver rest. She stood for a moment, her shoulders drooping in despair, then she slammed down the phone and ran back upstairs.

Judy stepped back from her narrow secret observation post and smiled.

The surgery was empty. As they entered, a woman, her skin the colour of clay, came out of the consulting room and stood looking around in dazed disbelief. The receptionist hurried out from her cubicle but the woman pushed past her and the two men, almost running from the room. Doctor Lessiter’s buzzer sounded and a moment later they were shown in. He was replacing a file in a big wooden cupboard. ‘Horrible part of the job,’ he said, sounding brisk and unconcerned, ‘there’s no way to break bad news is there?’

‘Indeed there isn’t, Doctor Lessiter.’ Barnaby could not have wished for a neater opening. ‘I favour the straightforward approach myself. Could you tell me what you were doing on the afternoon of Friday the seventeenth of this month?’

‘I’ve already told you.’ He sat behind his desk and got on with a bit of knuckle cracking. ‘What an inefficient lot you are, to be sure. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.’

‘You stated that you were watching the Test match on television.’

‘That’s right.’

‘All afternoon?’

‘Absolutely.’ He pulled a final finger. The crack sounded very loud in the quiet room. Suddenly the silence seemed to thicken; change character. The doctor was staring at his fingers with some surprise as if he had never seen them before. He looked at Barnaby’s grave features, at Troy and back to Barnaby again. ‘Yes. Absolutely ... that’s right.’ But the certainty had gone. It was no longer a statement of fact. He had the air of a man who knows he’s been rumbled but doesn’t yet know how.

‘The light stopped play at eleven that morning. For the day.’

‘Oh ... well ... maybe it was Thursday I watched. Yes, actually it was. I remember now—’

‘You have your rounds on Thursday. Or so you declared in your previous statement.’

‘Oh yes - of course I do. How silly of me ...’ Sweat beaded his forehead and started to roll, like transparent little glass beads, down his nose. His eyes flickered around the room seeking inspiration from the instrument cabinet, the chrome, rubber-covered examination trolley, the big wooden cupboard. ‘I don’t see the point of this, you know. I mean we all know the old lady died in the evening.’

‘I can assure you our inquiries are very relevant. We don’t waste our own and the public’s time unnecessarily.’

Trevor Lessiter still did not reply. Barnaby was anxious not to give him too much leeway. Already he could see the doctor rolling with the punch of his broken alibi, trying to dredge up a suitable alternative. Time for the frighteners.

‘You would not deny that you have the knowledge and equipment here to prepare an infusion of hemlock?’

‘What! But that’s ludicrous ... you don’t need special equipment. Anyone could—’

‘Not anyone could sign a death certificate.’

‘I’ve never heard such an outrageous ... I was here all evening.’

‘We only have your word for that, sir.’

‘My wife and daughter—’

‘Went out, if you recall.’

‘I swear to you—’

‘You swore to us about your whereabouts that afternoon, Doctor Lessiter. You were lying then. Why should you not be lying now?’

‘How dare you.’ He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple rode furiously up and down as if seeking an escape from his throat. ‘I’ve never heard such—’

‘Can you explain why, when you were the last person to use Miss Simpson’s telephone, no prints were found on it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What reason did you have for wiping that receiver clean?’

‘Me! I didn’t touch it ... I didn’t.’ Some more nervous gulping. ‘Look ... all right ... I wasn’t here in the afternoon. Now, Barnaby ... will what I’m going to tell you now remain absolutely confidential?’

‘I can’t guarantee that, I’m afraid. Of course if it doesn’t relate to the case there’s no reason why it should ever be made public.’

‘But it will go on record, won’t it?’

‘We shall take a further statement, certainly.’ Right on cue Troy produced his notebook.

‘I’d have to give up the practice if this became public. Leave the area.’ Trevor Lessiter slumped in his smart leather chair. His chipmunk cheeks, now quite deflated, were tuckered grey bags. Then the grey flushed red with panic. ‘You won’t tell my wife?’

‘We don’t “tell” anyone anything, sir. That’s not how we work. Alibis are checked to eliminate the innocent as much as to discover the guilty.’

‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

The range of people who thought lying to the police wasn’t doing anything wrong, reflected Barnaby, was widening all the time. He waited.

‘You’ve ... er ... met my wife, Chief Inspector. I’m envied, I know, by many people ... men that is ...’ Here, in spite of his intense anxiety, a shimmer of satisfaction flitted across his features. Barnaby was reminded briefly of Henry Trace. ‘... but Barbara is ... oh dear, I don’t know how to put this without sounding disloyal. She’s a wonderful companion ... great fun to be with but not very ...’ His face looked smaller, shrunk with embarrassment. He forced a laugh. ‘I’d better be John Blunt here, I can see. She’s not too interested in the physical side of marriage.’

So much for the fancy wrapping, thought Barnaby, recalling the painted eyes and heavy scent and the twin peaks that might have caused stout Cortez himself a stagger of disbelief.

‘So,’ continued the doctor, ‘obviously wanting her to be happy, I don’t press my attentions.’ He dropped his gaze, but not before Barnaby had seen a flash of spite and sour resentment in his eyes. The look of a man who has kept his side of the bargain and been sold down the river. ‘However’ - a light-hearted shrug - ‘I have needs ...’ Here his left lid trembled on the edge of a collusive wink, ‘... as we all do, and I ... er ... occasionally, very occasionally, visit an establishment that ... um ... caters for them.’

‘You mean a brothel?’

‘Ohhh!’ No longer John Blunt, he looked almost disgusted at Barnaby’s lack of finesse. ‘I wouldn’t say that. Not at all. It’s very ... refined, really. There’s a little shop which sells all sorts of jolly things. And they put on a little show. And a get-together with one of the young ladies afterwards if one is so inclined. And one usually is inclined. The performances are quite stimulating. Tasteful but stimulating.’ ‘And that is where you were on the afternoon of the seventeenth?’ The doctor nodded. ‘And the name and address of this establishment?’

Lessiter rootled about in his wallet and produced a card. ‘Perhaps you know of the ... er ... club ... ?’

Barnaby glanced at the card. ‘I believe I do, yes.’ He then asked for a photograph.

‘A photograph!’ The doctor gave a horrified squeak.

‘Purely for identification purposes. It will be returned, I assure you. Or perhaps you would like to accompany me ... ?’

‘Good God no.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve just had some passport pictures done. They’re in the study.’ He left the room, returning a few minutes later with four neat black and white squares. He handed over two of them. ‘I think this one ... look ... where I’m smiling is the most—’

‘I just need the one, thank you.’ As Barnaby turned away the doctor added, ‘You must ask for Krystal. She’s my special friend.’

Chapter Nine

The Casa Nova was not easily visible to the casual eye. It lurked in a grubby, unpoetic alley, Tennyson Mews, flanked by a stationery warehouse and a handbag factory. The windows of the latter were wide open, inviting the hot July sun into the already stifling workrooms. The smell of baking leather wafted out together with the jungle drumming of machinery. Troy parked near a peeling magenta door half garlanded with sickly lightbulbs offering ‘10 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS 10’ and, eyes alight with anticipation, undid his seat belt.

‘Casanova eh?’ he sniggered. ‘Naughty.’

‘New house to you,’ replied Barnaby. ‘Although I’ve no doubt the tricks’ll be as old as the hills.’

‘Looks promising though. Ten beautiful girls.’

‘A vulture’s egg is promising, son,’ replied Barnaby, getting out of the car. ‘You can wait here.’ He smiled as he pressed the buzzer, feeling the lance of Troy’s resentment between his shoulder blades. Barnaby said, ‘Krystal please,’ to a squawking voice box.

‘Mind how you go on the steps, dear.’

The flight of stairs was dimly lit. At the bottom one of the ten beautiful girls - ten - stepped forward. She could have been any age between thirty and sixty. The only certain thing was she hadn’t been a girl since he’d been a boy scout. Her hair had the colour and dusty bloom of black grapes. She wore lipstick like vermilion Vaseline and thick makeup journeyed over the eruptions and into the craters of her complexion. You could join all those dots up till the cows came home, thought Barnaby, and never reach the hidden treasure. She wore leopard-patterned shorts, a matching open-ended bra and heels so high that she seemed to be balancing on patent-leather stilts. She teetered forward, held his arm with an expert touch and smiled, showing teeth like pearls from a polluted oyster.

‘I expect you want to be a naughty boy, don’t you, dear?’

‘Not really,’ said Barnaby, disengaging himself and producing his warrant card.

‘Jeezuseffchrist. What the hell do you want? We’re all legal here, you know.’

‘I’m sure.’ He produced the passport snap. ‘Do you know this man?’

A quick glance. ‘Course I do. That’s Mr Lovejoy.’

‘Was he here last Friday afternoon? The seventeenth?’

‘He bloody lives here, mate.’

‘I need to know precisely.’

‘You’d better talk to Krystal then.’

‘Would you ask her to come here, please.’

‘She’ll come anywhere will that one - for a price.’ She gave him a nudge. ‘You look a well-set-up bloke. Why don’t you pop back when you’re off duty? Loosen up a bit. Treat yourself.’ She gave his blank stare a minute to change its mind and then said, ‘Oh well - be miserable then. Krystal’s doing the art class. She’ll be ten minutes yet. Second door on the right.’

Barnaby lifted a velvet curtain and found himself in a cold stone corridor. There were doors on both sides. He opened the second on the right and found himself facing another very musty curtain. He pushed this aside and passed through with unnecessary caution. Not a head turned. They were all watching the stage.

On a brightly lit dais a well-developed girl stood registering alarm in the commedia dell’arte manner: eyes wide, hands splayed out to ward off danger, half turning to flee. She wore a schoolgirl’s pleated skirt, white shirt and blazer. A felt hat with a striped band perched insecurely on her head. She had waist-length blond hair. A young man in tight trousers, velvet jacket and matching beret was painting the air in front of an easel. A harsh male voice, underpinned by a lot of martial bump and grind music, blasted out of two wall speakers.

‘And so the lovely Bridgeat, desperate to purchase medicines for her dying father, was tricked by the notorious artist Fouquet into leaving the convent and posing in his attic studio. Despite his fervid assurances to the contrary the lecherous Fouquet revealed, once she was securely in his lair, that the money would be paid only for a nude study!’

Here the young man mimed rather graphically what he wanted the lovely Brigitte to do. She wept and wailed and wrung her hands, then, tremblingly, affectingly, started to undress. First the blazer, then the little white schoolgirl blouse that she was bursting out of, then the tiny pleated skirt. She cowered realistically, folding slender arms across an extravagantly ample bosom. The voice crackled on.

‘“If you wish to save your beloved father’s life you know what you must do,” cried the evil Fouquet.’

Weeping, the girl removed her lace-up shoes, knee socks and bra. The evil Fouquet, not to be outdone, slipped out of his velvet smock, revealing a hairless dark brown chest. Brigitte was now left in the sort of briefs any self-respecting Mother Superior would have consigned to the flames with tongs.

‘But as the lascivious artiste attempted to position the lovely virgin he was swept away on a tide of desire.’

Surprise, surprise, thought Barnaby, yawning. He slipped back through the curtain and waited in the Colditz corridor. The dreary posturings in the art class gave him a sudden sharp perspective on his home life and the clean sweet embraces he shared with Joyce. So her Bakewell Surprise could double as a manhole cover. So his daughter looked like the wreck of the Hesperus and had a Swiftian line in put-downs. He compared her with Doctor Lessiter’s special friend and counted his blessings.

Released at last by a fake orgasmic cry, the punters shuffled out. Young, middle-aged, elderly. No one, it seemed, had come with a mate. They emerged solitarily, blinking in the hard light, like melancholy moles. He gave it a few moments then re-entered the room.

‘Brigitte’ was perched on the artist’s stool, smoking and wearing a wrapper. Her flesh shimmered through the gauzy stuff. The pearly flesh, long silver-white curls and butter-milky complexion gave her an appearance of wholesomeness totally at variance with her surroundings. She looked as if she would be more at home on a farm milking something. She spoke.

‘Give us a bleeding chance, lover. Next show’s half an hour. Pay outside.’ He produced his wallet. ‘Fuckin ’ell.’ She stubbed out her cigarette but not before he had recognized the smell. ‘I don’t take the hard stuff, you know. You’d be on something, believe you me, if you had this bloody job.’

‘I’m making one or two inquiries—’

‘I’m not talking to you without witnesses.’ She disappeared through a door behind the stage. It opened directly on to a tiny dressing room. Barnaby just managed to squeeze in. The room stank of cheap scent, hair lacquer, sweat and cigarette smoke. It was occupied by two girls, their rear ends shoe-horned on to a couple of plastic chairs. They wore bright bedraggled feathers and nipple stars. They sussed him straight away, giving him hard aggrieved stares.

‘What you done then, Kris?’

‘Bugger all. And he can’t say I have.’

Barnaby showed her the photograph of Trevor Lessiter. ‘Do you know this man?’

‘Yeah - that’s poor old Loveless. Or Lovejoy as he calls himself. Dunno what ’is real name is.’

‘Was he here last Friday afternoon?’

‘He’s here every Friday afternoon. And Monday and Wednesday. He’s no trouble. A bit of bondage. The daffodil routine. But mostly straight. His wife won’t let him ’ave any, you know.’

‘Yeah.’ This interjection from the red feathers had the force of a bunched fist. ‘’E gave her a mink coat for Christmas an’ all.’

‘I worked it out,’ said Krystal, ‘and I told him. I’d have to do it five hundred times to buy a mink. A decent one, I mean - not one that scarpered back to the zoo the minute the whistle went.’

‘You’d be too shagged out to wear it, Kris.’

‘You bloody reckon?’ She gave a mirthless shriek.

‘They stink an’ all if you’re out in the rain,’ said the red nipple stars. ‘Them that fall off the back of the bunny wagon.’ More mirthless shrieks. Barnaby cut in firmly.

‘Can you tell me what time Mr Lovejoy left last Friday?’

‘Half-past five. I remember ’cause that’s when I knock off for an hour. He asked me to go and have some tea with him. He was always asking me out. You have to pretend ... you know ... that you like them, and then, some of them - the simple ones - they really believe you. Try to get you to meet them outside. It’s pathetic, really.’

She raised both hands and lifted the heavy mass of silver curls. Underneath lay dirty red hair chopped savagely and clumsily short. She grinned at the chief inspector’s involuntary start of surprise.

‘He thought it was real - didn’t you, sunshine?’

‘I love the innocent ones, don’t you?’ said the girl with the strong vocal attack. ‘They really make you want to piss yourself.’

‘I was innocent once,’ said Krystal. ‘I thought a dildo was a prehistoric bird before I discovered this place.’

Caws of laughter; the tattered feathers shook. They gazed at him with hard bright eyes. They looked both predatory and harmless, like debeaked birds of prey. He made an excuse and left.

Chapter Ten

The little country church was packed. Barnaby slipped in unnoticed and stood behind a rear pillar. It was a brilliant day; sun poured through the clerestory windows. Behind the chancel rail all was white: the white-haired, white-robed vicar; two lovely arrangements of white flowers flanking the altar; a simple sheaf of lilies on the small coffin.

Most of the mourners were in ordinary clothes but there was an inky spattering of black. Several men wore arm bands, some of the women dark scarves. Barnaby was surprised to see that almost a quarter of the gathering were what he thought of as young: i.e. under thirty.

Miss Bellringer, clad in rusty, jet-encrusted black, sat in the front right-hand pew, her eagle profile expressionless under a plumed cavalier hat, her eyes dry. In the opposite pew (kept for the squire and his relations?) Henry Trace sat, sombre-suited, with Katherine. She wore a coffee-coloured silk dress and a black chiffon scarf with little gold coins sewn into the edge. The Lessiters sat, together but separately, staring straight ahead. You would never have thought they were a family.

Dennis in his role as usher had gone right over the top, tying a huge black bow to his arm, the ends shyly resting on his hip. His mother lay, becalmed, a mountain of bullet-coloured taffeta and grey net veiling in the second pew. Mrs Quine was there showily wiping away a non-existent tear, with Lisa Dawn still sighing and snuffling. Phyllis Cadell was in navy, David Whiteley in jeans and a dark striped shirt. In the back row the old man Jake wept openly, mopping up his tears with a red-spotted handkerchief. Then, when everyone knelt and Henry Trace bowed his head, Barnaby saw Michael Lacey, who remained upright in his seat glancing round at the respectful congregation with a mixture of impatience and scorn. He had made no concession to propriety and was wearing a paint-stained boiler suit and a peaked denim cap.

‘For man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live ...’

Emily Simpson had lived, by comparison with a large proportion of the world’s population, quite a long time, but she had still not been allowed her allotted span. No one, thought Barnaby, should be sent out on to that long journey a day, an hour or even a second before their natural time. He loosened his collar against the heat, closed his eyes and rested his forehead for a moment on the cool stone.

Figures moved behind his lowered lids: Laceys and Lessiters, Phyllis Cadell, David Whiteley, the Rainbirds, Henry Trace. They approached each other, met, mingled, broke apart in a passionless pavane. Who belonged with whom? If he knew that he would know everything.

Barnaby had started dreaming about the couple in the woods: two shapes twisting and turning, loops and knots of white limbs now fixed like sculpture, now softly melting together. Last night they had spun very slowly, a mobile of lust on an invisible thread, and he had waited in his sleep, breath seemingly held, for his first sight of their faces. But as the figures finished their slow circumfluence all he saw were two blank white hairless ovals.

A beam of dust-filled sunlight ambered the sheaf of lilies. Everyone rose to sing ‘The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended’. Behind Barnaby a dark branch of yew, activated by a sudden flurry of wind, knocked on the glass.