Written in Blood

Midsomer Madness

Tom Barnaby was missing his daughter. Cully was in Eastern Europe with an Arts Council tour of Much Ado About Nothing. She was playing Beatrice while Nicholas, her husband of eighteen months, had been cast in the colourful but vastly subordinate role of Don John. This after a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company had failed to offer the kind of parts he spent all his offstage moments dreaming about.

They had visited the Barnabys the night before their departure and Tom, who knew Nicholas well and his daughter very well indeed, could see trouble on the horizon. Nicholas was plainly torn between pride in his wife’s success and resentment at the widening gap between their professional fortunes. To rub in the salt, Cully had recently been filming in The Crucible, a prestigious production for BBC2 to be shown while they were away.

Of course Nicholas could have turned Much Ado down and hung around London waiting for something better, but there was no way, he told his father-in-law on the eve of their departure, that he was letting Cully racket around half Europe in the company of a dozen male actors. He and Barnaby were sitting in the conservatory at the time, drinking Clare Valley Shiraz. Watching his beautiful girl, arm in arm with his wife and on the point of joining them, Barnaby sympathised keenly.

It was not, he was sure, that the lad did not trust his wife. The root of the problem lay in Nicholas’s own insecurities. He still could not credit that he had won such a prize. Even on the wedding day, passed in a golden haze of bliss, Barnaby had noticed quite clearly this obverse shadow of disbelief.

They had been away now nearly two weeks and had left behind a memento - an enchanting Russian Blue kitten, Kilmowski, acquired just before the tour was offered. At least, Joyce described it as enchanting. Barnaby regarded the animal as a damn nuisance. He could no longer sit down without remembering to check both chair and cushions or open a door without a warning squeal from his wife. Yesterday the Independent had been torn to shreds on the doormat, unreadable even before wee’d on.

And, as if his daughter’s absence and the kitten’s presence was not enough, Barnaby was now faced with the misery of dieting. Always a big man, he had taken up cooking a couple of years previously, largely in self-defence, for Joyce’s food was so spectacularly bad that friends, invited for dinner, had been known to bring it with them.

He had taken to the art like a duck to orange sauce and had discovered, after years of munching on indescribable indefinables chased by antacid tablets, that he had, by nature, the appetite of a king. It was just his luck that the king in question happened to be Henry the Eighth.

Even a man of six foot three cannot healthily carry sixteen stone and he had been warned, at his last check-up, that a minimum of thirty pounds would have to go. And he was trying. He really was. But it was bloody hard. At the moment he was spinning out a slice of toast, having polished off his boiled egg in two scoops.

Joyce, pressing the plunger in the cafetière, was keeping an eye out for the postman. She was hoping for a card or letter from Poland, where Much Ado was running for the next fortnight - hoping, she realised, probably in vain, for Cully was a negligent correspondent to put it mildly. Nicholas was the one most likely to keep in touch.

Joyce couldn’t help worrying about them both however much common sense pointed out that an august body such as the Arts Council would hardly be sending a company of English actors into danger. But the whole of Eastern Europe seemed to her so volatile that today’s safe area could well be tomorrow’s war zone. Threatening words and phrases pattered around Joyce’s mind - ‘unstable government’, ‘fundamentalist guerrillas’, ‘racial riots’, ‘trigger-happy border guards’, ‘roof-top snipers’.

These unhappy reflections were shattered by an enraged yell. She turned to see her husband grasping the kitten by the scruff of its neck and lifting it into the air.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ She ran across the room. ‘Give him to me. Right now, Tom!’ Kilmowski was passed over. ‘How could you be so unkind.’

‘It’s just walked through my marmalade.’

‘He doesn’t know.’ Joyce kissed a grey velvet triangular nose. ‘Do you?’ The kitten squinted amberly at her. ‘Poor little scrap.’

She placed Kilmowski gently on the carpet, whereupon he immediately sought the edge of the tablecloth, dug in his claws and started to climb again.

‘Look! Look at that.’

‘Leave him alone. D’you want some fresh coffee?’

‘No thanks.’ Barnaby glanced at the clock. It was nearly nine thirty. ‘Better be off.’ As he was putting on his overcoat the phone rang. ‘Would you take that, love? Say I’m on my way.’

‘Of course it might just be for me.’ Joyce sounded quite huffy. ‘I do have a wide circle of friends, some of whom have been known to ring me up from time to time.’

‘’Course you have.’ Barnaby came back wrapped in heavy black and white herringbone tweed and pulling on his gloves. ‘And of course they do.’ He kissed a coolish cheek. ‘Back around six.’

As he turned to leave Barnaby sourly regarded the kitten, now squatting, with great dignity, in the precise centre of his tray. Kilmowski stared straight through him then, crossing his eyes with effort, gave a squeaky little fart.

It was a foul day. Rain during the night followed by an early morning freeze-up had turned the roads to glass. Barnaby drove his blue Orion with great care, taking twice as long over the journey as was usual. An extremely cautious swing through the police station’s main gates had his rear wheels skittering sideways. A scene-of-crime Sherpa van, on the point of exit, wheeled into nippy avoidance. He eased gently into his reserved space and walked slowly into the building.

A WPC at the desk looked up. ‘Morning, sir. They’ve been trying to get you at home. Something’s come up.’

Barnaby lifted his hand in acknowledgement and made for his office. He was crossing the enclosed walkway that linked the CID block to the station proper when he observed his bag carrier striding smartly towards him. Gavin Troy wore a long, tightly belted black leather coat which flapped and slapped against his boots. A dark cap covered his cropped red hair and he had, in readiness, put on the steel-rimmed glasses he wore when driving. He looked like a storm trooper.

Knowing the pleasure such a comparison would afford, Barnaby immediately put it from his mind. As they drew closer he could see that Troy was scowling with bad temper.

‘Morning, sergeant.’

‘Chief. We’ve got a murder.’ Troy gave a regimental swivel on his heel and fell into step beside the boss. ‘On your desk.’

‘Well, there’s a novelty.’

‘Midsomer Worthy. Just the bare details. Apparently the woman who discovered the body, a Mrs Bundy, was so hysterical nobody’s been able to get much sense out of her.’ Troy moved ahead quickly to open the office door. ‘SOCO have just left.’

‘Yes. I barely missed them.’

‘And Doc Bullard’s there.’

‘Already?’

‘He lives in the next village. Charlecote Lucy.’

‘So he does.’ Barnaby sat down behind his desk and picked up the report.

‘Victim’s male,’ said Troy. ‘Found in his bed—’

‘Thank you. I can read.’

Suit yourself. Troy waited, impatient but concealing it, while Barnaby cleared his desk. This involved two memos and several quite lengthy phone calls delegating work in hand.

The chief inspector had not troubled to remove his coat and this, plus the warmth of the building, made him feel quite snug, but once outside the harsh air snatched all the heat from his body. His lungs cringed as the wind whistled down his windpipe and his lips were so dry and cold they stuck together.

Inside the car Troy drew on his black peccary driving gloves (sliced off at the knuckles and buckled at the wrist), turned the heater full on and negotiated his way into Causton High Street. He was an extremely skilled driver but inclined to be overproud of that skill and to perform on occasion in a very flamboyant manner. At work he never took unnecessary risks, but Barnaby sometimes wondered about his sergeant’s off-duty motoring. However at the moment he was easing the car along the A4007 in a manner that was, for him, positively decorous. The bad-tempered scowl, so marked half an hour ago, had died down into mere sullenness.

‘What’s the matter with you this morning?’

‘I’m all right, sir.’

The matter was Troy’s cousin Colin. His mother’s sister’s boy. Colin had been a thorn in Troy’s flesh for years. Sailing through exams that Troy had had to sweat blood even to scrape a pass in. Silver-tongued, sarcastic, Colin was always laughing at things his cousin held most dear. He seemed to regard Troy’s whole lifestyle as some sort of comedic entertainment, referring to the sergeant more than once as a clockwork Rambo. Last night he had turned up at his Aunty Betty’s when Troy was also present and for the same reason - to deliver a birthday gift. Winking at his cousin, Colin had taken off his filthy battered sheepskin jacket to flash the message on his T-shirt: ‘When The Going Gets Tough The Smart Bugger Off ’. He had just left university and, to Troy’s deep satisfaction, had so far been unable to find a job.

‘They make me laugh,’ said Troy, with bitter lack of humour. Barnaby sensibly received this out-of-the-blue remark in silence.

‘People who don’t reckon the police,’ continued his sergeant, signalling and easing on to a slip road. ‘Catch them being mugged or burgled or losing their bloody car. They start yelling for us then fast enough.’ His grip on the steering wheel tightened till the seams on his gloves looked fit to burst.

Barnaby only half listened. The inclination to tease out the reason for Troy’s present petulance had proved fleeting. It could be anything, for Gavin was a walking mass of insecurities. He also had an overwhelming need to be admired which, given the public’s current perception of the Force, was in no danger at all of being satisfied.

The chief inspector was also distracted by a keen gnawing in his stomach, which seemed similarly proportioned now to the inside of Jonah’s whale - his breakfast slice of toast and solitary boiled egg bounced and fell from wall to hungry wall like a solitary sock in a tumble dryer.

‘Over there, chief.’

Troy was crunching around a village green on a surface newly scattered with rough sand. Barnaby could see a Panda, the SOCO van and George Bullard’s blue Viva parked in the driveway of an attractive double-fronted cottage with prettily fretworked shutters. Troy pulled up a few feet away.

It was very quiet. There was some moody quacking from the ducks slithering about on their frozen pond and a fair amount of bird song, though what the hell they could find to sing about on a day like this Troy could not even begin to comprehend. He took in the immaculate oval of expensive, beautifully maintained houses. In their gardens trees and shrubs glittered with frost in the hard, bright winter light. Only the prominent display of burglar alarms detracted from a Christmas-calendar image of perfection. As they approached Plover’s Rest the footsteps of the two men rang out on the rock-hard road with the clarity of horses’ hooves.

At the gate a constable was telling a small gathering of people, who were staring at the house in a hopeful and fascinated way, that there was nothing to see and would they please move along. Stretching his arms wide he moved towards them and, broom-like, swept them away a few feet. He had done this more than once and more than once they had drifted back. Soon the barriers would go up and the containment problem would be solved. There was something officially dissuasive about the holey orange plastic. Once it was pegged in, observers, no matter how half-hearted their previous willingness to toe an invisible line, rarely pushed or climbed beyond it.

A policeman at the cottage door which was standing open, said, ‘Upstairs on the left, sir.’

Unnecessary information. Barnaby could smell the carnage even in the hall. As he climbed the stairs the scent became stronger and his stomach, already so cruelly maltreated, revolted further in anticipation.

The small bedroom was full of people. Scenes-of-crime; three men and one woman, their hands and feet encased in polythene. A stills photographer. And the body of a man clad in a towelling robe lying between the bed and the wardrobe. His feet were towards the door, his head, what there was left of it, closer to the overhanging duvet.

‘Have we got what did it?’ Barnaby stood on the threshold, neither touching the door nor stepping inside. A heavy candlestick smeared with blood and hair and already bagged and ticketed was held up. ‘Where’s the doc?’

‘In the kitchen, chief inspector,’ said the photographer - a young man with curly hair and a bright smile that his calling seemed to have done nothing to diminish. ‘Nice to see the sun for a change.’

Barnaby no sooner showed his face than George Bullard, sitting with a woman at the table, got up swiftly. He eased Barnaby and Troy back into the hall.

‘Can’t talk in there. She’s in a terrible state.’ They stood bunched into an awkward knot in the narrow passage, the knob of the downstairs cloakroom digging into Troy’s back. ‘Before you ask, between eleven last night and one this morning. Might be a bit later, but that’s as close as I can make it right now. Whoever did it was in a hell of a temper. There’s a huge blow in the centre of the forehead which may well have finished him but they just went on bashing—’

‘Yes, George, I saw. Face to face then?’

‘Absolutely. Nothing sneaky about this one.’ He was carrying a mug which he now drained and handed to Sergeant Troy. Then he picked up his coat, which was draped over the banisters. ‘No fighting either’s my guess.’

The tiny hall became even more jammed as the technical services video team arrived and George Bullard tried to squeeze out. Barnaby and Troy backed into the kitchen, where the unfortunate discoverer of the body was being comforted by a policewoman. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and Troy’s nostrils twitched in appreciation.

On first hearing the name Bundy, Barnaby’s imagination had lazily conjured up a middle-aged dumpling of a woman. A Happy Families playing card. Starched apron, up to her stout dimpled elbows in flour. Voluble, a bit of a busybody but warm-hearted withal. The sort who would ‘do anything’ for you.

The person facing him was thin, barely thirty and wore a shiny nylon overall - three-quarters-length, in pink and white check, with tails like a man’s shirt - plus leggings and a black polo-necked jumper. Her hands gripped the upper parts of her arms, which were tightly folded against her flattish chest, and her fingernails, quite long, dug fiercely into the flesh. Barnaby suspected that, once released, her whole body would start to vibrate. Her face was in constant motion, eyes blinking, lips twitching, and her head shook rapidly from side to side as if to remove some terrible imprint from her mind. Barnaby sat down at the table. Troy withdrew, leaning his rough notebook on a worktop near the sink and uncapping his Biro.

‘Mrs Bundy ... ?’ She stared down into her cup, at the congealing puddle of melting sugar. ‘This must have been a terrible shock for you.’

After a very long pause her carefully painted lips formed the soundless word, ‘yes’. She coughed, repeated the affirmative then said, in a thready whisper, ‘I’ve never seen a dead person before.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Barnaby. He gave it five and then a bit longer. ‘Do you feel up to helping me by answering one or two questions?’

‘I don’t know.’ She released her arms and reached with a trembling hand for a gold packet of Benson’s Super Kings lying next to a half-full ashtray. She lit up, producing a gas lighter from her pocket, and drew deep, exhaling with her eyes closed. ‘I’m not going back upstairs.’ Released, her voice ran shrilly up the scale. ‘Not in that room.’

Behind her back Troy rolled his eyeballs, mocking such dramatic overkill. He caught the attention of the policewoman and gave a complicitous wink. She stared coldly back.

‘No, no. Of course not.’ Hastily Barnaby offered reassurance. ‘Really I’m more interested in discovering what happened before you found Mr Hadleigh.’

‘Oh.’ She looked very slightly consoled but also puzzled. ‘You mean, on me way here? I come on the bus.’

‘More when you first approached the house, Mrs Bundy. Did you notice anything at all unusual?’

‘What sort of thing?’

Well, if we knew that ducky, Troy muttered in his head, we wouldn’t be asking, would we? They were going to be here all day at this pussyfooting rate. He leered hungrily at the shiny packet of twenty minus seven and decided he could murder the rest.

‘Well, the gate was wide open. That means the postman’s been. He won’t shut it, even after Mr Hadleigh went and put a sign on. So I closed it behind me and walked up the path and - you talking about anything out of the ordinary - I couldn’t help noticing the curtains were still closed. Downstairs in the lounge and in Mr Hadleigh’s bedroom. And then I go to let meself in—’

‘You have your own key?’

‘Oh yes.’ She added, with rather touching pride, ‘All the people I clean for have given me a key. But the door’s bolted on the inside. I stood there for a minute not knowing quite what to do, then I went round the back. I tried the kitchen door but not with what you’d call high hopes. It doesn’t have a proper Yale but it’s got a dead bolt top and bottom. Anyway, I lift the latch and walk right in.’

‘It opened straight away?’

‘Yes. I went in the hall and shouted “hello”—’

‘Did you see any post there, Mrs Bundy?’

‘No, I didn’t, now you come to mention it.’

‘Carry on.’

‘I put me apron on—’

‘Do you bring it with you?’

‘No. That hangs on a peg in the broom cupboard together with a scarf against the dust.’ She patted her hair - a straw-coloured airy confection; teased, sprayed, moussed and bleached beyond redemption.

‘Then I notice not just that he hadn’t had his breakfast, but the table wasn’t even laid. So, what with that and the curtains and everything, I wondered if he might’ve been took bad. I felt a bit embarrassed, to tell you the truth. I didn’t like to go upstairs in case he was still in bed - me husband’s a bit funny over things like that - on the other hand I couldn’t settle down to work not knowing if the house was empty or not. If you get my meaning.’

‘I do,’ said Barnaby. ‘Absolutely.’

‘So ...’ Here it was. The dark heart of the tale. She braced herself, incising half moons once more in her arms. ‘I went to his room—’

‘The door was open?’

‘Yes.’

‘Light on?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Bundy shouted, and struck her forehead with her fists, compelled by a fierce hatred of the memory. ‘Oh! I could curse myself for going in there. The smell ... the smell ... that should have told me. Why didn’t I just go back downstairs and call somebody? But you don’t think, do you?’

‘’Course you don’t, love,’ said the policewoman.

‘I shall never stop seeing him. I know I shan’t. Never. Till the end of my days.’

Barnaby thought that this was probably true. The image would change, of course, but would inevitably re-create itself a thousand times. A bad day indeed for Mrs Bundy.

She had already mentally fled back to the kitchen. Barnaby, reluctantly but necessarily, took her back upstairs. ‘Did you touch anything in the room?’

‘Christ! Are you kidding?’ For the first time vitality flared. She sounded outraged. ‘I come down that bloody fast me feet didn’t touch the carpet.’

‘Did you see—?’

‘I saw him. That’s all I saw. One look and I scarpered. All right?’ She pushed her face across the table until it was inches from his own. Barnaby could see she was either going to strike out or burst into tears.

‘Fine. That’s fine, Mrs Bundy. Thank you.’ His voice was excessively calm. He looked at the young policewoman. ‘I think we could all ... ?’

While tea was being made Mrs Bundy extended her acquaintance with the Bensons. There were now nine lipsticked butts in the ashtray. Troy looked elsewhere.

The sergeant was a deeply frustrated man. He couldn’t smoke in the office. He couldn’t smoke in the car. He couldn’t smoke on the job. (Not his day job anyway.) And, now that the dangers of passive smoking had been provably demonstrated, he had to be bloody careful when and where he smoked at home. For Talisa Leanne, his heart’s delight and the best reason for living a man could ever hope to come across, was only two, and two-year-old lungs were obviously extremely vulnerable. Troy had found himself, only that very morning, not only enjoying his post-breakfast ciggie in the toilet but blowing the smoke out of the window. I’m an endangered species I am, he reflected bitterly now, accepting, in poor substitute, a cup of strong Breakfast Blend.

‘So you’re back in the kitchen, Mrs Bundy,’ said the chief inspector, adopting an easy conversational tone as if they were discussing the weather.

‘I am,’ said Mrs Bundy firmly.

‘And then what?’

‘I was sick.’ She nodded in Troy’s direction. ‘Over there.’

Although the sink was by now spotless the sergeant sniffed fastidiously and whisked himself and his notebook some distance away.

‘Then I rang Don at work and he got in touch with your lot. He come right over but they won’t let him in.’

‘No. Sorry about that,’ said Barnaby. ‘But I won’t keep you a minute longer than I have to.’ He drank some of his tea, which was delicious. ‘That’s a lot of crockery on the draining board. Did he entertain much, Mr Hadleigh?’

She shook her head. ‘Very rare. Only there’s a group in the village meet here regular. Once a month. They do writing together - stories and that.’ She sounded faintly apologetic and smiled for the first time. ‘Well, it takes all sorts doesn’t it?’

‘It does indeed.’ Barnaby, smiling in return, sensed, on the edge of his vision, that Troy was about to speak and gave a small holding movement with his hand. ‘Could you perhaps, Mrs Bundy, give me the names of any of the members?’

‘As to who was here last night I wouldn’t really know. But Mr and Mrs Clapton next door sometimes come.’ She pointed to her left. ‘And the Lyddiards from Gresham House. It’s about six down on this side of the Green. A big place. Pineapples on the gate. I do for them as well. Just the rough.’

‘A married couple?’

‘Oh no. Miss Honoria and her sister-in-law. She’s sweet, Mrs L. I feel sorry for her. They haven’t even got a telly.’

‘Had you worked for Mr Hadleigh long?’

‘Nearly ten years. Ever since he bought the cottage. All through once a week and top up Thursday. His washing goes to the laundry.’

‘So you’d know him pretty well?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He was very reserved. Not like some of my ladies. Often I’ll just be getting started and they’ll go, “I’m that down today, Carol. Come on - let’s have a break and a cuppa.” And we’ll pull a chair up and they’ll tell me all about it. But not Mr Hadleigh. Close was his middle name. Quite honestly I don’t think I know him any better now than I did the day I started.’

‘What was he like to work for?’

‘Very particular. Everything had to be just so. Ornaments and books back exactly where they came from. But at least he left you alone to get on with it. Unlike some.’

‘No Mrs Hadleigh then?’

‘He was a widower. You’ll see their wedding picture on the sideboard in the lounge. Always a vase of fresh flowers nearby, just like a shrine. Very sad. You’d think he’d be getting over it a bit by now.’

‘Do you know when Mrs Hadleigh actually died?’

‘No idea.’

‘Can you think of any reason, Mrs Bundy, why anyone would want to—?’

‘No, I can’t! And I want to go home now.’ She looked at the policewoman in a beseeching way as if the woman had some sort of casting vote. Her voice had started to shake again.

‘Almost through,’ said Barnaby. ‘I’d just like you, if you would, to glance around here and the sitting room and see if anything’s missing.’

‘Everything’s all right in here.’ She got up, looking at the policewoman. ‘Would you mind ... ?’ They left the room together, returning almost straight away.

‘The photograph’s gone. Of the wedding.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Not that I can see offhand.’

‘We’ll probably have to talk to you again, I’m afraid—’

‘Not here you won’t. I’m never coming in this place again as long as I live.’

‘Don’t worry. It would be at home or at the station, whichever you prefer. And we’d like your fingerprints - just for purposes of elimination.’

The policewoman helped Mrs Bundy on with her coat and opened the kitchen door only to smartly close it again. She took Mrs Bundy’s arm, led her to one side and Barnaby heard murmured suggestions of support and possible counselling. One or two addresses and telephone numbers were noted down.

There were heavy footsteps on the narrow stairs and some stumbling and banging as Gerald Hadleigh departed his home for the final time. A few minutes later Mrs Bundy followed and the police were left in sole occupation of Plover’s Rest.

‘All yours, Tom.’ Aubrey Marine stood in the doorway, still encased in protective polythene. ‘We’re downstairs now.’

The windows in Hadleigh’s bedroom were wide open, but the air still stank of mashy flesh and thick, puddling blood. There was a dark, sticky stain on the flowered Axminster, but nothing else to show that violence had been so recently and ferociously meted out. Every splinter of bone, however minute, every smear of grey matter and shred of skin, had been scrupulously tweezered away for close and, with luck, revelatory examination.

The room was sparsely furnished with expensive but dull reproduction pieces. A heavy oak bed and large wardrobe looking vaguely Regency. A pair of bedside cupboards with gilt filigree handles. A walnut chest of drawers, more on the Georgian side, on which stood two mildly-surprised-looking Staffordshire lions, their black-painted, crinkly knitting-wool manes glazed with powdered aluminium, as was every other smooth surface in the room. There was also a single bronze candlestick, twin to the murder weapon. On the bedside cupboard, furthest from where the body had lain, was a carafe of water covered by an upturned glass, a leather travelling alarm clock and a bunch of keys. Barnaby picked them up.

‘He drove a Celica.’

‘Very nice too.’

Troy, having opened one of the wardrobe doors, now reached up and, slipping his fingers behind the bevelled edge of the other, released the bolt. Two thirds of the space was taken up with clothes on hangers: suits, hacking jackets, a Burberry, neatly pressed trousers, a tie rack. And the rest by a stack of sliding, open-fronted drawers, eight in number, holding shirts in transparent wrappers, underwear, socks and soft, pricey sweaters in cashmere or lamb’s wool labelled Pringle and Braemar. Troy removed one of the shirts and regarded its immaculate snowy folds with deep approval. A mark showing some sort of feathered vertebrate admitted that the garment under scrutiny was kept in such pristine nick by the Brown Bird Laundry. The sergeant replaced it carefully and stepped back for a moment looking at the neatly folded stacks of clothes. Their regimental order and cleanliness warmed his heart. He himself left the house each morning a vision of spotless perfection and woe betide Maureen if things were otherwise.

On one of the rare occasions when he and the chief were having an off-duty drink Barnaby had said that he felt sometimes his sergeant objected to murder not so much because it was an outrageous violation against a human soul but because it was chaotic. Troy had been both hurt and angry at this remark and the lack of moral sensibility that it implied. He had dwelt upon it at some length after the two men had parted, which process made him angrier still, for introspection was not his forte and he avoided its dangers whenever possible. He dodged them now by bringing himself back to the present and getting on with the job, slipping his fingers quickly but thoroughly into the pockets of all the clothes on hangers. He discovered nothing more exciting than a clean handkerchief.

‘Look at these.’

Barnaby was standing by the bed, stripped bare by the SOCO team. A pair of striped pyjamas lay on the mattress. Troy, having dutifully crossed to the chief’s side and looked as instructed, was rather at a loss as to how to respond. Seen one pair of pyjamas and, it struck him, you had seen a multitude.

‘Very nice, chief.’

‘Why wasn’t he wearing them?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘He got undressed but instead of getting into these he put a robe on.’

‘Probably going to have a bath.’

Barnaby gave a non-committal grunt and wandered into the rather spartan en-suite bathroom. It was like a tiny sauna. The walls, bath enclosure and ceiling were stripped pine. A wooden bowl of shaving soap and an ivory-handled brush were on the shelf over the basin next to a double-sided mirror. Also on the shelf was a Rolex Oyster. He opened the louvred door of the cabinet. It held nothing but the usual complement of pain relievers, plasters, cotton wool, eye drops and deodorant. There was no steam on the glass or droplets of water on the wall but then, after twelve hours and in this temperature, there wouldn’t be. The post-mortem would tell them if Hadleigh had had a bath but not, of course, if he had merely intended to.

Troy, who had completed his search by going through a box of cufflinks, studs and other very ordinary bits and pieces, called out, ‘Nothing in the wardrobe. I’ll try the chest of drawers.’

‘Fine,’ Barnaby replied, though he knew how necessarily superficial their observations must be in comparison with the forensic reports that would be landing on his desk sometime within the next forty-eight hours.

‘Chief?’ Barnaby wandered back. ‘We’ve been robbed.’

‘So we have.’

Barnaby bent down and peered into the four drawers - two small ones paired over two large. All were lined with gingham-patterned paper which had a slightly waxy surface - not ideal from an investigative point of view. All were empty. He said, ‘How strange.’

‘Don’t see anything strange about stealing clothes in weather like this. A dosser’d be glad of the extra warmth.’

‘Maybe the drawers didn’t contain clothes. And I’m not sure this crime’s opportunistic. There’s a Rolex Oyster in the bathroom.’ Troy whistled. ‘No petty thief leaves a watch behind, whether he knows its real value or not.’

‘True, true,’ said the sergeant. ‘Pity the back door was unlocked. Means we don’t know if the murderer’s someone who’d normally have had to break in.’

‘Well, whoever it was must have moved very quietly, otherwise Hadleigh would have heard them and come downstairs.’

‘Perhaps he was planning to. Picked up a sound when he was half undressed, put the robe on to investigate but they got up here first. Would explain why he wasn’t wearing pyjamas.’

Barnaby wandered out on to the landing and into the second bedroom. It was even smaller than the first and used for storage. It held stacked cans of paint, rollers and a ladder. Plus a vacuum cleaner resting against an ironing board. There were also two well-worn brown-leather matching cases. One only slightly larger than a briefcase, the other medium sized. Barnaby made a mental note to check with Mrs Bundy if there had been a third.

He pulled aside the fawn velvet curtain and looked down at the Green. The portable pod had arrived and was setting up near the duck pond. It was a long, pale prefabricated building dropped quite literally (and hydraulically) off the back of a lorry. The locals were already departing from the front of the house in droves. Calling out, ‘Downstairs,’ he moved off.

Troy, trying on the Rolex, turning his wrist this way and that in front of the bathroom mirror, removed it in a hurry and smeared his crisp shirt cuff with grey powder. He cursed silently, knowing it would irritate him for the rest of the day. He wondered how odd it would look if he pushed the cuff out of sight up his coat sleeve. Of course then he’d have to do the same with the other. Snorting with annoyance he joined his boss.

The house was still full of people. More detectives were working in the kitchen and the second door, leading to the garage, now stood open. Barnaby spotted the flat, reptilian head of Inspector Meredith, his bête noire, peering into a segmented wooden box of cutlery. Scenes-of-crime were all over the garden. At the front of the adjoining wood were more spectators. One man had a little boy perched on his shoulders and was pointing something out to him.

Barnaby entered a large room to the right of the front door where, he presumed, the Writers Circle had met. Like the bedroom it was curiously characterless. It contained a long sofa and one much smaller, plus three capacious armchairs. All the furniture had loose chintz covers in wishy-washy pastel shades or insipid flower prints. The curtains were beige velvet and floor length, the walls a dreary cream. More boring pictures, this time in rather ornate frames: pyramids of fruit in pewter dishes flanked by dead game birds, hunting scenes, a print of Salisbury cathedral. There was something somnolent and torpid about the place. It had the air of a gentleman’s club, or an elderly solicitor’s waiting room.

The chief inspector recalled Mrs Bundy’s remarks about Mr Hadleigh giving nothing away. This room certainly supported such a notion. But could Hadleigh, could anyone, be as blandly dull and predictable as these trappings and the clothes upstairs implied? The answer to that was obviously yes but Barnaby was hopeful that subsequent investigations would prove otherwise.

In the far corner a light-oak bureau with a drop-leaf front was being systematically worked over by Detective Sergeant Ian Carpenter, who looked up as Barnaby walked over.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Found anything interesting?’

‘Not really. Insurance - car and house. Bank statements. The usual bills - water, phone, electricity. All paid.’

‘No letters?’

‘Nothing personal at all. Except this.’ He picked up a framed photograph which had been lying face down inside the bureau and passed it across. Barnaby took it over to the window.

The happy couple were standing in the doorway of what appeared to be a very old church. She wore a cream dress and a little pill-box hat embroidered with gold thread and tiny pearls. Attached to this was a fluttery shoulder-length veil which she was holding away from her face with a gloved hand that also clutched a nosegay of carnations and mignonette.

Gerald Hadleigh, dark-suited, an apricot rose in his buttonhole, gripped her other hand tightly. She was much shorter than him and had tilted her head back to quite a sharp degree so that she could look into his eyes. She was laughing happily but the groom’s profile was serious and intent and the set of his mouth suggested that the prize he was holding on to so firmly would not easily be surrendered.

Barnaby regretted that Hadleigh was not facing the camera. He would have liked to look directly at the man, try to guess his thoughts and imagine his emotions. Hadleigh was certainly attractive. Reconstructed, the battered head proved to be both large and shapely, with a straight nose and strong, square jaw. He could have been a soldier. An explorer, perhaps. Or an extremely determined man of the cloth.

What was really interesting about the picture, of course, was why it was not in its place on the sideboard beside the vase of scented viburnum but hidden away in a bureau. Barnaby looked forward to finding the answer to this. He was, in fact, looking forward generally.

There was something about the very beginning of a case, when no medical or forensic evidence to speak of was available, that exhilarated him. Marooned in a vast landscape of unknown limits with barely a visual aid in sight, Barnaby remained quite unfazed.

But it had not always been so, which was why he understood, and sympathised with, his sergeant’s very different reaction. Troy suffered greatly from what Barnaby always thought of as the ‘treading-water syndrome’. Panic at being out of one’s depth. Fear that, if a case did not quickly yield up its secrets, it would remain forever impenetrable. Troy craved for something to hang on to, and quickly. A fact, an artefact, a list, a bag, a lighter, a wallet. Anything as long as it was solidly present and clearly visible. Right now he was picking up and sniffing the remains of a cigar. But Barnaby had seen too many wrong conclusions drawn from apparently incorruptible certainties to take easy comfort from their presence.

‘This,’ said Troy now, rolling the elegant, slim, gold-banded cylinder between his fingers, ‘is what I call a stogy. Beautiful.’

‘Must be one of the guests,’ said Barnaby crossing to an alcove filled with books. ‘He’s no smoker. You can always smell it.’

The chief inspector bent his head sideways, twisting round to read the titles. All non-fiction. Architecture, travel, food and wine. Several on the craft of writing. The arrangement of the books was in sharp contrast to those in his own household, where volumes would be jumbled up any old how with titles every which way. There was always at least one stack of books on the floor, a pile of new paperbacks by Joyce’s chair and at least a couple on her bedside table. Here the spines were aligned like high-kicking chorus girls, tallest at each end, smallest in the middle. Most wore shiny, fresh-looking dust jackets now dulled by SOCO’s ministrations. Barnaby reached out and, with a satisfaction which he knew to be pathetically childish even as he indulged it, poked one of the books completely out of line, muttering ‘Anal retentive.’

‘Was he?’ said Troy, abandoning his contemplation of rosy apples and lifeless grouse. ‘The dirty devil.’

Barnaby went outside, only to be once more accosted by Aubrey Marine, this time divested of his polythene carapace and carrying a sealed metal container.

‘The Celica’s missing, Tom.’

‘Oh? Garage doors forced?’

‘Nope. All nicely locked up. Of course our man could simply have used Hadleigh’s keys and replaced them. Or the car could be off somewhere having its MOT. Just another little wrinkle.’ He beamed and set off down the path.

The two policemen followed, the cold air smacking them hard in the face. Barnaby shivered and told himself this was due to a grievous lack of solid pabulum. He looked at his watch, convinced he had missed lunch by half a century, but it was barely twelve.

‘We’ll have time to call next door. What did she say their names were, Mrs Bundy? Crampton?’

‘Clapton, chief.’

‘What would I do without your memory, sergeant?’ It was true. His own got worse every day. ‘Maybe she’ll come up with a cup of tea.’

‘You never know. We could strike lucky.’

‘And a biscuit.’

Outside the cottage the crowd, now untidily straggling behind a barrier, had increased. Young mothers with toddlers in pushchairs, three children of school age. Old men in flat caps and mufflers which crossed their chests to be tied up behind like soldiers’ bandoleers. They were blowing on their mittens, flinging their arms backwards and forwards, trying to keep warm. Catching their deaths. Some middle-aged women, hair rollers like pink foam sausages poking from woollen head scarves, were sharing a Thermos. One was bringing a new arrival up to date.

‘Basically they have brought him out but he was in this zip-up. You couldn’t see a thing.’ The tone of her voice was deeply resentful, as if a ticket for a show had been bought and the curtain had failed to rise.

‘Our Don hangs his suit up in one of them,’ said her companion. ‘They’re dead useful.’

‘Mister, mister.’ Two boys, around eight or nine, ran up to Barnaby.

‘What do you want?’ Troy grimaced fiercely at them and his fingers twitched.

‘I want a burger, onions and chips,’ said the larger of the lads, jerking his head in the direction of the portable pod, ‘and he wants a hot dog.’

‘Very funny. Why aren’t you at school?’

‘I got a bone in me leg,’ replied the village wit.

‘Well, if you don’t want a pain in the arse to go with it you’d better clear off.’

At least a dozen cars had drawn up on the far side of the Green. Every gaze was fixed on to the cottage as if the occupants’ heads had been locked into position. Troy stared coolly across at them all and he made his leather coat crack fiercely round his boots as he strode along, basking the while in his authoritative role at the very heart of the drama.

‘I say!’ Barnaby, his hand on the gate of Trevelyan Villas, was stopped by a girl holding a runny-nosed blue-cheeked baby swaddled in a puce and ultramarine shell suit. ‘There’s nobody in. He teaches at Causton Comprehensive and Sue’s at the local play group.’

‘Do you have any idea when Mrs Clapton will be back?’

‘Around one usually.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What do you want to see them for?’ asked a tall, thin man wearing a sweater with a snowman on it. He had a dewdrop at the end of his nose.

Ignoring him, the policemen turned their backs and Barnaby set off along the sparkling cold pavement. Troy hurried to keep up.

‘You going to try the Lyddiards, chief?’

‘Might as well.’

Gresham House’s pineapples were in poor condition. One had lost its leaves, the other was crumbling from the base up. The sandstone pillars they surmounted were also in poor shape and the iron gates, some fifteen feet tall and ornately curlicued, were rusty.

The house was a monstrous pile of heavily pitted grey stone, three storeys high with a small, round tower fatly bulging from one corner of the top storey like a warty carbuncle and from which icicles depended like daggers. The door and window frames, once white, were now a dirty grey and flaking fast. Perhaps in the spring and summer, softened by climbers in bloom or pots of bright geraniums on the steps, it might, just, have seemed attractive. But at the moment (thought Sergeant Troy) it looked about as jolly as Castle Dracula.

Barnaby, on the contrary, saw much to admire. His gardener’s soul was cheered by the many trees and the shrub borders on each side of the drive. Variegated hollies festooned with damp cobwebs, a shiny sealing-wax-red dogwood. Two flowering wintersweets, the ground beneath them thick with aconites and Iris stylosa. Mahonias, their droopy yellow racemes smelling richly of honey, and also several hebes. He recognised the tough and charming ‘Mrs Winder’, her narrow elliptical leaves gleaming purple in the grey winter light. And ... could that Cotoneaster be? ... surely not? ...

‘Good grief. It’s a Rothschildianus.’

‘Is that right?’ Troy stared at some creamy yellow balls roughly the size of sheep droppings.

‘What a jewel. I’ve got the Exvuriensis. Nice of course. But not the same.’

‘No, well. It wouldn’t be.’ Troy racked his brains for some intelligent rejoinder, for he hated to be found wanting. Faintly, memory chimed. ‘Aren’t they rich, chief? The Rothschilds? Millionaries or something?’

‘They have this wonderful garden in Hampshire. Exbury. You can buy plants there.’

Troy nodded vaguely and his interest in the creamy balls, never overwhelming, expired, for there was not a spot of horticultural blood in his veins. Almost the first thing he had done after moving into his small 1970s terraced house was see off the front garden and replace it with a tarmacadam parking space.

‘Not much point in trying that,’ said Barnaby. On the top of a cracked flight of steps was a mass of dried leaves and twiggy bits which the wind had piled against the front door. ‘Doesn’t look as if it’s been opened for years.’

As they made their way down the side of the house Troy said, only half joking, ‘Beggars and tradesmen round the back.’

They found a second opening. Poorly made and ill fitting, the door was the type that usually leads simply to an outhouse, but it was the only one visible so Barnaby rapped on it. Quite loudly, but without result.

He waited for a few moments and was about to try again when Troy stayed his hand. A woman, having made her way through a bareish vegetable garden, was crossing the stone courtyard towards them. A large, middle-aged woman in a shapeless, lumpy woollen skirt, a Barbour almost black with age and a waterproof fisherman’s hat. A worn leather pouch hung around her neck, bouncing on the granite shelf of her bosom like a nosebag on a horse. She had a huge face, an expanse of raw red flesh, the features lassoed into a tight, malignant bunch in the centre, dark shaggy eyebrows and a mouth like a gin trap. She was what Troy’s dad would have called ‘as ugly as sin’.

‘I was right about this place,’ Troy mumbled just before she hove into earshot. ‘Here’s Dracula’s mother.’

To the men’s astonishment she walked straight past them as if they were invisible, lifted the wooden latch in the old door and slammed it in their faces. Barnaby was furious. He raised his fist and thundered on the shaky panels. The door was immediately snatched open.

‘How dare you! Can’t you read?’ She pointed a Fair Isled digit at a weathered metal plate: No Hawkers. No Circulars. ‘Go away at once or I shall call the police.’

‘We are the police,’ replied Barnaby and his helpmate smirked invisibly at the sweet neatness of this riposte. Arrogant, fart-faced old biddy.

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’

‘We were hardly given an opportunity.’ Barnaby reached inside his overcoat and produced his warrant card. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. Causton CID.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To ask a few questions. I take it you are Miss Lyddiard?’

‘Questions about what?’

‘Could we come inside for a moment?’

She gave an impatient and irritated sigh but stood back, admitting them into what is now called a utility room, though this one had the floor area of a two-bedroomed bungalow. It was full of old furniture, a rubber-rollered mangle, garden tools, jumbled-up sports equipment - croquet mallets, tennis racquets and nets - and bicycles. There was a long workbench covered with dahlia corms, drying bulbs and other gardening paraphernalia.

A family of five could live in this, bridled Sergeant Troy as he made his way silently behind the others though, in truth, he had little concern for either the homeless or the destitute.

At the far end of the room was a second door much more solid and with a wire-mesh glass panel in the top half. Honoria pushed at this and they were in the kitchen. Another vast space - high ceilinged, shabby and extremely cold.

It was not unoccupied. A small, round woman, wearing baggy trousers and several sweaters topped with a cardigan embroidered vividly with butterflies, was making pastry at an ancient deal table. She stopped immediately when they came in, looking embarrassed and a little apprehensive, as if caught out in some foolishness.

Barnaby, uncertain whether this was the sister-in-law, the cook or someone else entirely, waited to be informed, but in vain.

‘We’re investigating a suspicious death.’ He addressed the two of them equally. ‘I’m afraid a near neighbour of yours. Mr Hadleigh.’

He observed their twin expressions of incredulity without surprise and wondered how many more times he would be faced with just such a reaction before the day was out. It was always the same. No one could ever believe that someone they had recently seen alive and apparently well was no more. It was impossible. That sort of thing only happened to strangers. An unknown name in the papers. An alien face on the television screen.

The woman in the cardigan had gone deathly pale. She had a sweet face which seemed made for happiness, not the slack-jawed distress that had now overtaken it.

‘Gerald ... But we only ... oh. Ohhh ...’

‘For heaven’s sake, Amy. Remember who you are.’ Honoria seized her sister-in-law by the arm and bundled her, none too gently, into the nearest chair. ‘There are strangers present.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Amy trembled and looked around with the air of a child seeking comfort. Barnaby suspected she might be in for a long wait. Honoria spoke.

‘There has obviously been some abhorrent mix up,’ she said firmly, putting both of them straight once and for all.

Barnaby could imagine her on the seashore forbidding the waves their approach. Or standing in the eye of a storm sending the wind about its business.

‘I’m afraid not, Miss Lyddiard. Mr Hadleigh was killed late yesterday.’

‘Killed. Are you saying—’

‘Murdered. Yes, I’m afraid so.’

Amy burst into a storm of frightened tears. Honoria sat down and became very still. Her face had a stripped quality as if she had suddenly forgotten everything that she had ever known. Eventually she said, ‘I see.’

‘I understand that there was a meeting at his house last night and that you were both present.’

‘How perfectly frightful.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And in Midsomer Worthy. I warned people again and again, but no one would listen.’ Her grey eyes stared directly at him and Barnaby was frigorified. He had never seen such coldness. ‘The barbarians are at the gates.’

‘I’m sure you would wish to help—’

‘What has this dreadful business to do with us? I am a Lyddiard, as is my brother’s wife. Our name is woven into the very warp and woof of England and above reproach.’

Oh dear, oh dear, mused Troy. Pardon me while I curtsey. Knowing he was expected to remove it he pushed his cap to the back of his head with his thumb and glanced around with bold derision, taking in cracked gloss paint on walls the colour of dirty custard, free-standing old-fashioned cupboards and a huge Electrolux fridge of the type that was obsolete before Adam went into the cider business. He’d be ashamed to ask Maureen to keep her yoghurts in it. If I couldn’t do better than this, reflected Troy, with a deep inner glow of satisfaction, I’d shoot myself. He tuned back in.

‘... and so, I am sure you would wish to help us in any way you can.’ Here Barnaby paused, wondering if, by introducing the word ‘duty’, he had overstretched his luck but it seemed not.

‘Naturally we would wish to do all that we can to bring this miscreant to justice. If justice it can these days be called.’

Barnaby recognised a note of harsh longing and guessed that Honoria was wistfully recalling the days when a villein could be publicly disembowelled for patting his master’s dog. He said, ‘Could you perhaps tell us first who was present at your meeting last night and give us their addresses.’ Troy wrote the details down. ‘And you met, how often?’

‘Once a month.’

‘And did yesterday follow the usual pattern?’

‘No. We had a guest speaker.’ Already she was sounding impatient. ‘What on earth has our meeting to do with someone breaking in and attacking Gerald?’

‘No one broke in, Miss Lyddiard.’ Barnaby saw the release of this information as inevitable given the form his questioning would be compelled to take.

‘You mean’ - Amy was staring in disbelief - ‘Gerald just opened the door and let him in?’

‘Opening the door’ - Honoria separated her words and spoke loudly as if Amy was not only mentally retarded but deaf as well - ‘is not the same as letting someone in. People are always calling round,’ she turned back to Barnaby, ‘delivering rubbishy newspapers, begging for charity or asking for jumble—’

‘At that hour of the night?’ Troy consciously exaggerated his West of Slough twang, whining his vowels and dropping his T’s - emphasising the social divide but on his own terms. He could have saved his breath. Honoria did not even deign to glance in his direction, just stared blankly down her nose, her expression that of someone noticing a fresh and particularly repulsive specimen of doggy doo in the middle of their priceless Aubusson.

‘A guest speaker?’ reminded Barnaby.

‘Grave disappointment. Max Jennings. Some sort of novelist.’

The name sounded vaguely familiar, though Barnaby couldn’t think from where. Certainly it would not be from personal experience, for he never read fiction. Indeed hardly read at all, preferring to paint or cook or garden in his spare time.

‘Consequently,’ concluded Honoria, ‘we finished later than usual. Around ten thirty.’

‘And did you all leave then?’

‘All but Rex St John. And Jennings.’

‘To go straight home?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Honoria, adding, without apparent irony, ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’

‘And you didn’t go out again?’ She stared at him as if he were mad. ‘Or return to Plover’s Rest for any reason?’

Pluvvers is it? noted Troy, who had been rhyming it with Rover’s, as in Return.

‘Certainly not.’

‘And ...’ Barnaby turned to the younger woman. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t ...’

‘Mrs Lyddiard - Amy. No. I didn’t go out either.’

‘Did you retire straight away?’ Barnaby asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Honoria. ‘I had a headache. The visitor was allowed to smoke. A disgusting habit. He wouldn’t have done it here.’

‘And you, Mrs Lyddiard?’ Barnaby smiled encouragingly.

‘Not quite straight away. First I made us a drink - cocoa actually—’

‘They don’t want to know every little detail of our domestic life.’

‘I’m sorry, Honoria.’

‘Why don’t you tell them how much sugar you put in? Describe the cups and saucers.’

Amy’s full lower lip started to quiver and Barnaby gave up. There seemed little point, given Honoria’s recent strictures on the spreading of gossip, in persisting. Plenty of other people were yet to be questioned and some, merely by the law of averages, were bound to prove co-operative. And he could always get back to Mrs Lyddiard, preferably when she was alone. But Troy jumped in where his superior had decided not to tread. Touching his tie and ostentatiously displaying nicotined fingertips he said, ‘What sort of man was Mr Hadleigh?’

‘He was a gentleman.’

And that put paid to that. End of conversation, end of audience. Barnaby explained that their fingerprints would be needed. Honoria retaliated with great vigour. Such a degrading procedure was quite out of the question. As Amy was showing them out she could be heard declaiming loudly, ‘Jumped up clowns!’

A gentleman. Troy kicked savagely at the gravel as they made their way back to the rusty gate. Of course we all know what that means. The upper crust on life’s farm-house. He lit a cigarette. A member of the club. Right tie. Right accent. Right attitude. Right sort of money. Right wing. (Troy himself was extremely right wing, but from quite a different jumping-off point, and for quite different reasons.) And, of course, blue balls.

‘You can’t believe folk like that, can you?’ He opened the gate and stood aside to let Barnaby pass through. ‘In this D and A. I bet she’s never done a stroke of work in her life. Bloody parasite.’

‘Now look.’ Barnaby, his voice sharp and irritable, stopped in mid-stride. His back ached from standing and he liked being patronised no more than the next man. ‘Your prejudices are your own affair, Gavin, unless they interfere with your work, in which case they also become mine. Our job is to extract information and to persuade people to reveal themselves. Anything that hinders this procedure is a time-wasting bloody nuisance. And I don’t expect to find it coming from my own side of the fence.’

‘Sir.’

‘Have you got that?’

‘Yeah. Got that.’ The sergeant chewed furiously on his high tar. ‘It’s just they get up my fucking nose.’

‘No one’s asking you to pretend liking or respect. In any case either attitude would be as inappropriate as the one you’re currently wallowing in. Your own feelings are immaterial. Or should be. Self-absorption is fatal in our job. We should be looking out, not in.’

‘Yeah,’ said Troy again. ‘Sorry, chief.’

Trouble was, he knew Barnaby was right. And on the whole he did look out for he loved his work and wanted to do it well. Troy took great pride even in his most modest achievements - of which, it had to be said, there were many. He decided to make a real effort. Politeness to a fault would be the order of the day. After all, civility cost nothing. But there’d be no green-welly licking. Green-welly licking was right out.

By this time they were halfway across the green. Kitty Fosse, a dark, attractive girl, a reporter on the Causton Echo, came running to meet them.

‘Hi, chief inspector. What’s the story?’

‘Hullo, Kitty.’ He walked on. The reporter, hurrying to keep up, stumbled over a tussock of grass and Troy leapt forward to assist.

‘Someone in the crowd said a body had been taken out,’ she said, while attempting to retrieve her arm.

‘That’s the case, yes.’

‘And is it the man who lived there? (Thank you, sergeant, I can manage.) A certain,’ she checked her spiral notebook, ‘Gerald Hadleigh?’

‘Mr Hadleigh was found dead early today in suspicious circumstances.’

‘Who by? (I said I could manage!)’ She wrenched her arm away. ‘How was he killed?’

‘You know the form, Kitty. There’ll be a proper statement later from communications.’

As the chief strode away Troy turned to the girl. ‘Why don’t we meet up later for a drink? Might have a leak for you by then.’

‘You’re not catching me on that one twice.’ Kitty gave him a look of deep disgust.

‘Sorry?’

‘Eighteen months ago. The Jolly Cavalier?’ She had naively gone along hoping for some sort of scoop, but had received instead several propositions, none of which was fit for a girl to blow her nose on.

‘Hey - that’s right.’ He grinned in belated recognition. ‘Another time then?’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’

Barnaby had a visit to Rex St John next in mind. If he and Jennings had been the last to leave, discovering the time and order of their departure was extremely relevant. They found the weather-beaten clapboard house, almost directly opposite Plover’s Rest, without any trouble but, although their approach produced a canine response the like of which neither man had ever heard nor ever wished to hear again, no human soul appeared.

Putting Borodino firmly behind them and making their way back to Hadleigh’s cottage Barnaby noticed a woman with a bicycle standing by the gate of the house next door. She had obviously been informed by someone in the crowd that they had been previously seeking her out, for she was looking in a concerned, expectant manner in their direction. Barnaby, fishing for his warrant card, approached.

‘Mrs Clapton?’

‘Yes. What is it?’ Her expression, a little alarmed but plainly anxious to be of help, was a welcome contrast to their last encounter.

‘Could we talk inside, do you think?’

‘Of course.’

The front door opened on to a tiny square of coconut matting directly behind which reared some steep and narrow stairs. The stairwell was painted Prussian blue and covered with stars. Sue showed them into an untidy sitting room where, after asking permission, Barnaby sank, swiftly and gratefully, into a deep armchair from which, when the time came, he could hardly extricate himself. Troy settled himself at a table affixed to a single barley-sugar-twist leg. The whole thing had such a severe wobble that he ended up balancing his notebook on his knee.

‘Is it about Gerald?’ She was breathing quickly and her eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘People on the pavement were saying all sorts of things. That he’d had an accident. Even that he’d ... died.’

‘I’m afraid that is the case, Mrs Clapton. But it was not an accident. Mr Hadleigh was deliberately killed.’

The colour leached from her face and flooded uncontrollably back, swoosh, a crimson tide. Then she hung her head, her expression invisible behind a fall of hair. After a few moments she sat up, appearing more composed. Her complexion stabilised at a shade resembling pale tea.

‘But we were all together - our Writers Circle. We had a lovely time.’ She sounded completely bewildered and also slightly resentful, as if the very loveliness of the time should itself have proved an amulet against disaster.

‘You met regularly, I believe?’

‘Yes. Every month.’ She was gazing now at her clogs. Clumsy things painted with little flowers and worn with woollen socks. ‘Gerald ... Gerald ...’

‘You can’t think of anyone who would wish to harm Mr Hadleigh?’

‘What do you mean?’ She looked from one man to the other in amazement. ‘Surely it was a burglar? A break-in?’

‘We are of course considering that possibility.’ Barnaby was at his most avuncular. ‘How long have you been neighbours?’

‘Since we moved here. About five years ago.’

‘You’d know Mr Hadleigh quite well, then?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He was always polite and helpful. A good sort to live next to - cleared the snow last winter when Brian did his back in. That sort of thing. But he wasn’t what you’d call revealing.’

‘But you met socially?’

‘Only at the group. We didn’t mix otherwise. Brian wouldn’t have liked it.’

‘Why not?’

‘He just doesn’t care for ... that class of person.’

Well there’s a turn-around, thought Troy. Mindful of the recent ticking-off his voice was politely neutral as he asked, ‘What class would that be, Mrs Clapton?’

‘“Officer class” was how Brian described it. Not that Gerald had been in the Forces. I got the impression he was a retired civil servant. It’s just Brian’s way of putting things. He’s a socialist.’ She squared her shoulders slightly and lifted her chin as if bravely confessing to some shameful peccadillo as, around Midsomer Worthy, it probably was. ‘People are pretty good about it on the whole.’

‘How did your writers’ group get on together?’

‘Fine. Mainly.’

‘But there must have been likes and dislikes. The occasional disagreements. Jealousy perhaps over a member’s success.’

‘Oh no. We weren’t professionals.’

Touché, thought Barnaby, before realising the remark had been made in all innocence. ‘Were you all working on different things?’

‘Yes. Gerald wrote short stories, Amy’s working on a novel ...’

As Barnaby listened he took in his surroundings. Two walls were emulsioned a hot, sandy orange, one terracotta, the fourth the same colour as the stairwell, minus the nebulae but with the addition of a stately and rather beautiful palm tree. A black frieze, in a Greek-key pattern, had been painted beneath the picture rail. It all reminded Barnaby of a visit he and Joyce had paid to Knossos. There was a wooden clothes-horse from which depended several bunches of slowly drying flowers and herbs. The carpet was wall-to-wall muesli. Sue continued talking.

‘... Night of the Hyena. I can’t relate to it at all. Guns, bombs, rockets - that’s men’s stuff, isn’t it? Just silliness. Except in real life of course, when they go off and kill people.’

‘Did you always meet at Mr Hadleigh’s?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Yes. Laura’s house is tiny, Rex’s a bit of a mess. Brian didn’t want them here and Honoria grumbled about it being too much trouble. Actually Amy said it was because she didn’t want to have to pay for the coffee and biscuits - oh! You won’t tell ...’

‘No worries on that score, Mrs Clapton,’ said Troy with a sympathetic smile.

Sue smiled shyly back. She took off her glasses, which she hated, and rested them in her lap. The lenses were thick as the bottoms of milk bottles. Sue dreamed of one day seeing a film where, after first letting her hair down, the hero remove the heroine’s glasses and says, ‘Hey ... know what? You look better with them on.’

Barnaby said, ‘I understand you had a guest speaker yesterday.’

‘A rare treat. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to get people considering we’re under an hour from central London.’

‘But this time you struck lucky?’

‘Yes. Everyone was surprised when he accepted. And he was so nice. Not a bit grand. Gave us all sorts of advice and tips. And he really listened, you know?’

‘So the evening was a success?’ She nodded vigorously.

‘No tensions or cross currents that you noticed?’

‘Only Gerald.’ Her face changed as she remembered what had momentarily been crowded out. ‘He hardly spoke, which was surprising. I thought he’d be asking lots of questions because he so much wanted to succeed. He would work over and over his writing trying to make it better.’

‘Was he any good?’ asked Troy.

Sue hesitated. Knowing it was wrong to speak ill of the dead she was certain it could not then be right to speak ill of their achievements. On the other hand she always tried to be honest and it wasn’t as if, in this case, the truth would hurt anyone. Least of all poor Gerald.

‘When Gerald read his stories out they sounded fine. He’d learned how to do it, you see, from all his books. But the minute he’d finished you couldn’t remember a word he’d said.’ This devastating indictment concluded, she suddenly got up as if remembering her manners.

‘I should have made you some tea,’ she said, plucking apologetically at the rainbow laces in her waistcoat.

‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Clapton.’ Barnaby’s hope of a biscuit was more than realised. A cake tin arrived with the tea and it was suggested that he helped himself.

‘Why are you asking so many questions about us?’ said Sue, handing around large mugs.

‘Just background. I understand Mr Jennings didn’t leave with the rest of you.’

‘No - it was funny, that. Brian made the first move, Gerald got the coats and it looked as if there was going to be a general exodus but then, when we were all halfway out the door, Max Jennings sat down again.’

‘Did you get the impression that was a deliberate manoeuvre?’ asked Troy.

‘I don’t think so. Just one of those awkward moments.’

‘Wouldn’t have taken you long to get home,’ said Barnaby. She didn’t reply but watched him with unnaturally close attention, like a participant in a quiz game expecting a trick question. ‘Did you go out again at all?’

‘No.’

‘Either of you?’ She frowned and covered her eyes with her hand as if needing to think. The movement was quick, but not quite quick enough for Barnaby to miss the flare of emotion. Stronger than concern or apprehension. Alarm perhaps. Fear even.

‘It was a bit late for that.’

‘Walking the dog maybe,’ said Troy, leaning forward - for he too sensed they were on fertile ground.

‘We haven’t got a dog.’

She elaborated quickly, using stiff little sentences looping round each other. Brian had gone up straight away. She had had things to get ready for play group. Plus some washing up from Mandy’s supper. Brian was well away by the time she got to bed. She herself couldn’t get to sleep. Too excited by the evening. But Brian, he was asleep the minute his head touched the pillow. And so on and tortuously on.

Barnaby listened, not unsympathetically, for he was aware of her dilemma. Unbrazen people who had something, by no means necessarily criminal, to hide either froze into protective stillness or talked non-stop about anything and everything to keep their tongue from alighting on the matter for concealment. Needing to move things along, he interrupted.

‘Perhaps, being awake, you heard Mr Jennings drive away?’

‘Yes.’ It was one long gasp of relief. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Do you happen to know when that was?’

‘I’m afraid not. You know how it is, lying in the dark. Time passes at a funny rate.’

‘Sure it was Mr Jennings’ car?’ asked Troy.

‘I can’t imagine who else’s it could have been. It had a very powerful engine and seemed to be revving up practically under our window.’

‘But you didn’t look out?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Mrs Clapton.’ Barnaby now entered upon his marathon struggle to part company from the fierce embrace of the armchair. ‘No, no. It’s all right. I can manage.’

‘We called on Mr St John,’ said Troy, averting his eyes for fear of laughter, ‘but he was out.’

‘Yes. It’s market day. He draws his pension and does the shopping and then his research at the library. Goes in at nine and catches the four o’clock bus back. You won’t find Laura at home either. She opens her shop at ten so she’d probably have left home before all this was discovered.’

‘What shop would that be?’ asked Sergeant Troy, closing his notebook.

‘The Spinning Wheel. Antiques. In Causton High Street.’

Barnaby, now fully upright, recognised the name. He had bought Joyce an outrageously priced Victorian footstool there for her birthday last year.

‘I shall have to ask you for some fingerprints I’m afraid, Mrs Clapton. Purely for purposes of elimination.’

‘Oh dear.’ Worry shadowed her eyes, which, without the hugely magnifying lenses, were small, blinky and weak as a rabbit’s. ‘My husband wouldn’t like that. He’s very into civil liberties.’

‘They’ll just be on a strip - not filed. And destroyed when our investigations are complete. In your presence, if that is what you would prefer.’

‘I see.’

‘There’s a portable incident room on the Green, as I expect you noticed.’ Barnaby spoke firmly, as if her popping in was as good as settled. ‘Or you and Mr Clapton might like to come to the station.’

By now they had reached the door. Fastened to one of the stripped wooden panels by Blu-tack was a painting of a dragon. His tail was wrapped around his body, the arrowed tip covering his nostrils and held in place by a wing membrane. Above his head in primary colours were the words: ‘Thank You For Not Smoking In Our Home’.

The creature’s expression of guilty naughtiness, alarm at being discovered and a lurking, laughing confidence that it would be forgiven was so precisely that of a well-loved child caught in similar defiant circumstances that Troy chuckled silently and Barnaby laughed out loud.

‘Who did this?’

‘Me. That’s Hector.’

‘It’s very good.’

‘Thank you.’ Sue blushed with pleasure. ‘He’s in all my stories.’

‘Do you ever sell your paintings, Mrs Clapton?’ asked Troy.

‘Ohh ... well ...’ Her face became transfigured.

‘Only my little girl, she’d just love him. In her room like.’

‘I could ... I suppose ... Yes.’

‘Fine. I’ll be in touch.’

They were all on the step by this time. As Barnaby and Troy left, Kitty Fosse, now in the company of two more reporters, both male, a man with a camera on his shoulder and a woman waving a long cylinder of yellow fluff pushed through the gate and zoomed, like a swarm of hornets, up the path. The policemen stood aside, judging, correctly, that their target was Sue.

‘So,’ said the chief inspector as they walked away. ‘What do you make of all that, sergeant?’

‘Covering for him, isn’t she?’

‘It looks like it. I wonder what Mr C. was actually up to while he was supposed to be “well away” last night.’

‘The smart move would be to talk to him before she does.’ Barnaby turned for a last look at Trevelyan Villas. The Press had disappeared inside. ‘And if you can get us to Causton Comprehensive within the next twenty minutes I’d say we have a very good chance of doing just that.’

‘On these roads?’ They had reached the car. Troy struggled to open the door which had frozen to the frame. He grinned. ‘No problem.’

In the gymnasium Brian was organising his play-construction group. Everyone but Denzil was spread around on the high-gloss, honey-coloured parquet. They sat cross-legged and back to back or lay acumbent. Denzil hung upside down from the ropes, his hands gripping and squeezing the rubber rings. Veins corded his neck and sweat hung from his lobes like drops of crystal.

‘Come along now, Denzil,’ called Brian. ‘We’re ready to start.’

Denzil showed no sign of having heard nor did Brian expect him to, for from the beginning he had made it plain that his modus operandi would be one of democratic openness. He knew that to assert the dialectic of belonging they needed to erase the official academic landscape and impose their own. Their meetings were not to be class/teacher confrontations but periods of adventurous exploration during which they would all reach out and spontaneously reveal their dreams, longings and frustrations which Brian would then shape and organise into a full-length drama provisionally entitled Slangwhang For Five Mute Voices.

This was scheduled to be seen at the close of the spring term - a fact that was already causing him considerable anxiety. Although the group undoubtedly had a great relish for dramatic expression (once they got going) and threw themselves with vigour and imaginative energy into all the improvisations, they were simply not interested in learning lines. In vain would Brian take home his rehearsal tape, extract the obscenities, massage the rest into some sort of coherent shape and transfer it to Mandy’s Amstrad. The group would accept the thin, perforated sheets, stuff them into the pockets of their jeans with discouraging nonchalance and ignore them thereafter.

Now Brian asked if anyone had had time to look over the results of the previous week’s work. Denzil, lowering himself slowly, said, ‘Yeah.’

‘How did it feel?’

‘Absorbent, man. Really absorbent.’

He hung an inch from the floor exciting deltoids which bulged like coconuts beneath grey, unhealthy skin, then dropped. Noiselessly. The others applauded. Denzil put a hand mockingly on his chest and dipped his shaven skull. A spider crouched in the very centre, the navy-blue threads of its web woven over his skull and disappearing down the neck of his Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. The words ‘CUT HERE’ were tattooed around the base of his throat. He strolled over to join the others, taking his time. ‘I reckon I could’ve been a trapeze artist - given the luck.’

‘Right! Warm-up time, you lot,’ cried Brian in a rushy, foolish voice. He started running on the spot, shaking his arms and legs about and rolling his head.

Denzil stood in front of Edie Carter, straddled his legs and mimed playing a guitar, rhythmically thrusting his pelvis into her face. Sluggishly two of the others got up. Collar, so called because he could not bear anything touching his neck, started shadow boxing. Little Boreham, weedily hopeless but dressed like an Olympic athlete, did a few shallow and uncertain press-ups.

Edie and her brother continued to sit, back to back, like a pair of exquisitely carved, beautifully decorated bookends. In profile their faces appeared almost identical (they were born on the same day) but Tom’s jaw was a little more prominent and heavier. They had long, thick, curling hair the colour of marmalade, exquisitely shaped noses and high, marbly-white foreheads like the children in Tudor paintings.

Brian looked forward eagerly each day to his first sighting of the Carter twins, for they constantly re-styled and re-invented themselves and never looked the same twice. Their dazzling skins, thick and smooth like cream, seemed, like blank canvases, to be crying out for decoration. They dressed, as small children would if left to themselves, in an assortment of unrelated finery. Today Edie wore a foamy scarlet RaRa topped with shreds of silk and lace and a banana-coloured sweat shirt full of holes. Tom was in jeans resembling pale blue shredded wheat and an American Repro jacket stencilled with midnight hags and burning cities and comic-book expletives.

‘Come on you two,’ called Brian.

Edie parted her rich carnation lips, flickered out her tongue, drew it in again. And smiled. Brian turned quickly away and began shadow boxing with Collar, much to the latter’s resentment.

When the group had first been formed Brian, very heavily into non-verbal communication, had encouraged everyone to sit around in a circle holding hands with their eyes closed. Next had come various physical exercises leading to a full class workout. These had been discontinued when Brian, wrestling on the floor with Collar, had accidentally touched his neck, receiving in return a clout across the ear that had made his head fizz for a week.

‘OK. Gather round, earthlings.’

Brian sat down in a single but rapidly accelerating movement. The twins turned towards him and smiled. Brian, faint with excitement and desire, smiled back. He could never decide which was the more beautiful, for he was equally besotted with them both.

‘Now,’ he said briskly, ‘where had we got to last week?’

No one remembered. Brian held the pause, nodding interrogatively at them all in turn for all the world, as Collar said afterwards, like the daft dog in the back of his mum’s Escort.

‘Was it ...’ Boreham puckered his brow, ‘the bit where Denzil went down the Social and got in that fight with a Paki?’

‘No,’ said Brian shortly. He was keenly aware of the ethnic imbalance in his group and had tried in vain to remedy the matter. No non-white person was interested in joining, possibly because of Denzil, who could be seen every Saturday in Causton High Street enthusiastically selling the British Nationalist Magazine on behalf of the BNP.

‘That were good. We could do that one again.’

‘No, we couldn’t.’ Brian was beginning to feel depressed. All the improvisations, no matter how pacific their inception, quickly became confrontational. Everyone it seemed loved rows and while there was no doubt that they were good theatre even Brian, inexperienced director/devisor that he was, could see that each violent highlight needed to be cushioned by a tranquil low light if the whole thing wasn’t going to explode in everyone’s faces.

‘I remember.’ Edie swivelled to face him, legs apart, elbows resting on her knees. ‘My bit I mean. From last week.’

‘She remembers, Bri,’ said Tom, taking pride. He winked, lowering an eyelid brilliantly adorned with red and blue flowers. Brian had long been agitatedly concerned over Tom’s eyelids. As far as he could see the pattern never varied by as much as a petal’s fall. The vivid colours were never smudged. The thought had struck him once that the lids might be tattooed, that this was some test of high machismo that only the greatly brave essayed. He’d never had the nerve to ask.

‘Excellent. So what was the situation? Listen everyone.’ Brian clapped his hands.

‘I were this woman that got really mad at her husband.’

‘And do you remember why, Edie?’

‘Yeah. ’Cause he were married to me and knocking somebody else about.’

‘Ah.’

‘So I go: “Eat shit, scumbag. Piss off to the fat old slag. See if I care. And take your stinking dog with you.” He had this pit bull, y’see.’

‘Bor could be the dog,’ said Collar.

‘Bloody ain’t.’ The royal-blue track suit rolled into a tight ball, like a hedgehog.

‘He’s little enough,’ Denzil grinned. ‘Trouble is, he’d never bite anybody. ’Cause he’s chicken - aincha, Bor?’

‘No!’ Boreham screwed up his eyes and folded his arms around his head.

‘Chicken ... chicken. Kwaa ... kwaa ...’ Denzil and Collar began to walk around, arms winged, moving in sharp, quick little jerks. Cast down glances darted everywhere. Feet, booted and sneakered, were slowly lifted and put down again with splayed out, finicky precision. It was very funny and, considering their sole experience of the real thing had been via Iceland’s frozen-food cabinet, amazingly accurate.

Brian hugged himself, rocking backwards and forwards on his non-existent bottom at these inventive and exuberant ad hoc measures. Then Denzil pecked Collar, who flapped his arms wildly in response and started to run about in all directions, squawking loudly.

Brian climbed wearily to his feet. Clapping his hands yet again and with much the same effect, he called: ‘OK. Kill the impro. That’s enough.’

Plainly it was not. The fowl play continued. Boreham, seeing his teasing compatriots were safely engaged elsewhere, decided after all to occupy the role of pit bull. He ran on all fours to where Brian was standing and started savaging his trousers.

‘Stop that, Boreham.’ Then, thinking a jovial note might restore the status quo, ‘Down boy!’ Little Bor lifted his leg.

Tom and Edie sat, unnaturally still and self-contained, watching. There was something about the quality of their attention, as they took in Brian’s dilemma, that disturbed him. He sensed both pity and relish, in which he was half right.

‘Everyone? Listen ...’ He put a friendly chuckle into the words. Bor, encouraged, gave an extra matey nudge and Brian crashed to the floor.

At this point the swing door was pushed open and Miss Panter, the head’s secretary, showed in two men. One, tall and heavily built, wore a tweed overcoat. The second, slim as a whip, was wrapped in black leather. Only Brian did not recognise the intruders immediately for what they were.

‘Mr Clapton?’

‘Yes.’

The older man came over and showed Brian a card with a photograph on. ‘Chief Inspector Barnaby, Causton CID. We’d like a word, please.’

‘Of course.’ Brian scrambled up awkwardly. ‘What about?’

‘In private.’

The younger man held the door open and Brian followed them out, unaware that his stock had just zoomed from rock bottom to something approaching gilt-edged.

They walked briskly towards the headmaster’s office, Brian, who happened to be in the middle, with the air of a squaddie being escorted to the jail house.

Troy had re-entered the portals of his Alma Mater with a certain swagger but no sense of nostalgia or pride. He had hated school. But, knowing from an early age what he wanted to be when he grew up, he had worked hard at the subjects that bored him as well as the few (social studies, computer science) that, just about, held his interest. He also avoided mixing with any hard-line bunking-off troublemakers. His ferocity at games, which kept him off the sports field almost as much as on, also kept him free of the jeering hassle any consistent attempts at serious study would otherwise have provoked. Now, striding over stained brown haircord down well-remembered corridors he muttered, ‘God, I loathe this place.’

Barnaby had finished his own schooling in the early fifties, before the local grammar had been integrated, but his daughter had been through the comprehensive system, eventually winning an exhibition to Cambridge. The Barnabys had been members of the PTA during her time at ‘this place’ and both had been impressed by the dedication of the teachers - often, it had seemed to them, in the face of overwhelming odds.

‘Cully came here, didn’t she, chief?’

‘That’s right.’ Barnaby spoke abruptly. He had never become indifferent to the wistful leer in men’s voices when they spoke his daughter’s name.

The head, Mr Hargreave, had vacated his office for their purposes and Miss Panter showed them in. Brian took the chair behind the desk, although a two-seater settee and large armchair were both empty. Barnaby, mindful of his earlier experience, sat on the edge of the sofa. Miss Panter returned with a tray of tea and some Garibaldi biscuits. Troy poured out, setting a cup in front of Brian.

‘There you go, Mr Clapton.’

‘What’s all this about?’

Barnaby thought the man’s bewilderment was probably genuine. The murder had not made the one o’clock news and, according to the main office, Brian had received no telephone calls that morning. Troy was taking advantage of the lull to despatch as many Garibaldis as he was able without appearing to push them non-stop into his mouth. He was starving. Parched too (down went the tea), plus, needless to say, desperate for a fag. He caught the chief’s eye and replaced morsel number five on the plate.

‘Delicious,’ he said, opening his notebook. ‘Squashedfly biscuits we used to call them.’

‘I’m afraid,’ began Barnaby, when Brian had finished his tea, ‘that I have some bad news.’

‘Mandy!’ The cup clattered into the saucer, spilling the dregs.

‘No, no.’ Barnaby hastily offered reassurance. ‘Nothing to do with your daughter.’

Troy watched as a little colour crept back into Brian’s deathly countenance. I shall be like that, he thought, when Talisa Leanne starts school. I shall never have a moment’s peace. The insight affected him physically, a cold gripe in the guts. As he struggled to put it aside Barnaby was explaining the reason for their visit.

‘Gerald!’ Amazement had barely registered before excited, almost pleasurable, interest took its place. The word ‘gleeful’ might have been appropriate. He said, in a crisp, self-satisfied manner, ‘I myself was with him only yesterday.’

‘We’re aware of that, Mr Clapton.’ Barnaby, who had no time for false displays of grief, had even less time for naked enjoyment in the face of violent death. ‘Could you tell—’

‘It was a most peculiar evening.’

‘Really? In what way?’

‘Tensions. Hidden tensions.’ Brian tossed back long but sparse ginger hair. ‘Visible none the less to a really perceptive person. Which of course, as a writer, one has to be.’

Barnaby nodded encouragingly and sat back to be a bit more comfy. This one was plainly going to run and run.

‘I’m in charge of drama here ...’

Brian spoke at length and was very frank, as people often are who have little worth concealing. Troy took advantage, resting his Biro, and managed to put away two more squashed-fly biscuits before the chief steered it all back to hidden tensions. Perhaps Mr Clapton could expand?

‘Gerald was behaving very oddly. Unnaturally quiet. And couldn’t wait to get rid of us.’

‘What about the others?’

‘Spent the whole time gushing over our visiting “celebrity”. What a reactionary fossil he turned out to be. Not a clue about contemporary drama. Not surprising, the stuff he churns out.’

‘You don’t admire Mr Jennings’ novels?’

‘Never read them. Got better things to do with my time.’

‘Can you recall who first suggested inviting him?’ Barnaby watched Brian’s reaction write itself across his face. He didn’t know. He hated to admit he didn’t know. But if he made an answer up he might be proved wrong, thus losing face even more notably.

‘You’ll have to leave that with me, chief inspector.’ Brian stroked his beard thoughtfully. He had grown it as soon as he was physically able, to hide the numerous large pink shiny warts on his chin.

Troy, who had got Brian well sussed, curled his lip. He could just see the little squit asking round, finding the answer and phoning in having ‘just remembered’. What a piss artist.

‘Did you talk to Mr Hadleigh during the course of the evening? Get any idea why he was so withdrawn?’

‘Not really. The conversation was general. As I’ve already explained.’ He spoke tersely and glanced at his watch.

‘Do you have any idea who might be responsible for Mr Hadleigh’s death?’

‘Me?’ In the centre of his bushy beard Brian’s wet, pink lips rounded to a wet, pink O, like the orifice of some tentacular sea creature. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d’ve thought the question pretty clear, sir,’ murmured Troy.

‘But you’re surely not—I mean ...’

Here we go, thought Troy, pinching the final biscuit. Altogether now, one, two, three: break-in, break-in. Wasn’t it a break-in? Brian did not let him down.

‘There was no sign of a forced entry, sir,’ replied Barnaby, omitting for the moment the matter of an unsecured kitchen. ‘Would you describe Mr Hadleigh as a cautious person?’

‘In what way?’

‘Might he for instance be likely to open the door to just anyone late at night?’

‘Doubt it. You know what they’re like, the professional classes. Piling up more stuff than any person could possibly need in one lifetime then frightened to death someone else might get a bite of their cherry.’ Troy snorted at the unconscious double entendre then turned his snort into a cough. ‘He’d got a door chain, window locks, burglar alarm. They all have round the Green.’

‘Given the present climate,’ said Barnaby dryly, ‘they’d be foolish to do otherwise.’

‘But all this hardware’s just a challenge to a really enterprising kid,’ cried Brian. ‘I’ve tried to explain this but will they listen?’ He sighed briefly over the intransigence of the bourgeoisie. ‘You should see Laura Hutton’s place - been there yet?’ Barnaby shook his head. ‘Like the Bastille.’

‘She’s probably got a lot of fancy pieces,’ said Troy. ‘Being in the trade, like.’

‘Some trade. Ripping off pensioners then selling the stuff at fifty times the price.’

‘An attractive woman all the same,’ murmured Barnaby, recalling his purchase of Joyce’s footstool.

‘If you like tall redheaded icebergs with more money than they know what to do with.’ If? thought Troy. If ? This man was round the twist. ‘Personally I’ve always found her completely unreal.’

‘You were Mr Hadleigh’s nearest neighbour—’

‘Only geographically. We didn’t mix.’

‘He was a widower, I understand. Would you happen to know if he was ... well ... emotionally involved with anyone at the time of his death?’

‘If you mean having it off,’ said Brian, with forthright contempt, ‘why don’t you say so? The answer’s no. At least not with anyone in Midsomer Worthy.’

‘How come you’re so sure, Mr Clapton?’ asked Troy.

‘Easy to see you don’t live in a village. Half the people there’ve got nothing better to do, once they’ve finished the Times crossword and checked their share prices, but stare out of the window. They don’t miss a trick, believe me.’

‘I wonder if there is anything you could tell us about Mr Hadleigh’s background?’

‘A civil servant who had taken early retirement. And we all know what that means. A platinum handshake and a fat pension all out of the taxpayer’s pocket. I’ve no time for people of that ilk.’ He caught the chief inspector’s eye and seemed to read something there that stayed his tongue. He paused, then added, rather awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry that he’s dead, of course.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Barnaby. ‘Now - if we could get back to yesterday evening. You left Plover’s Rest when exactly?’

‘Ten fifteen.’

‘And then?’

‘Home, where else? Marked some essays for the morning and went to bed.’

‘Sleep well?’

‘Oh yes. Do a proper day’s work and you have no trouble dropping off.’

The look he gave them underlined the implication in his words. Barnaby, though he had experienced in his long career tiredness so absolute that, waking or sleeping, he seemed to be trudging endlessly down a dark corridor of exhaustion in iron boots, rode this supercilious attack with ease. Troy took it personally, as he did everything, and reacted as if stung.

‘So, just to recap,’ said Barnaby, ‘you went home, did some checking and went to bed.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Brian shot his cuff and studied his watch. He managed to give the impression that though everyone else in the room might have world enough and time, his own was very tightly structured, crammed with exciting incident and that a plane for LA was standing by even as they spoke.

‘In other words, you did not go out at all?’

‘No.’ After a lengthy pause Brian picked up his cup, put it down again. Coughed. Blew his nose and peered into his hanky before putting it back into his pocket.

‘Mrs Clapton, on the other hand,’ said Sergeant Troy quietly (almost as if musing to himself), ‘seemed to have had a lot of trouble dropping off. She was still awake in the small hours. Heard Max Jennings drive away.’

‘Really.’

‘Yes. Really.’

There was an even longer pause during which the two policemen exchanged confident, almost amused glances not missed (and not meant to be missed) by the interviewee. They were both enjoying his predicament but Troy more so for he had, by nature, an unkind heart.

Brian removed his glasses and polished them. They were little and round with cruel steel rims. The type that even good-looking people cannot wear to advantage.

‘You understand why we are asking this question, Mr Clapton?’ Barnaby said eventually.

‘Um ...’

‘Mr Hadleigh’s murder took place between eleven and the early hours of this morning.’

Barnaby eased himself off the sofa and stood, a big broad man, towering over the desk. His expression was paternal. He smiled down at Brian with deep, confidence-inducing expectation and waited. It didn’t take long.

‘Oh!’ Brian struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I did pop out. Just for a quick turn around the Green. To blow the cobwebs away.’ He looked up, half wary, half seeking approval, and gave a rather infantile smile.

‘See anyone?’

‘No,’ Brian said, adding, lest there should be the slightest confusion, ‘no one at all.’

‘Well, I think that’s it.’ Having got his way Barnaby let his jaws part in a smile. ‘For now.’

‘Thank you,’ said Brian.

As they were leaving the office Miss Panter called out, ‘Mr Clapton? Your wife rang just after your meeting started. She said it was urgent. If you’d like to call her back by all means use my phone.’

‘I’m that hungry.’ Troy, caught up in the Causton one-way system, crept around the market square, which was crammed with stalls covered in bright awnings and traders shouting out impossible never-to-be-repeated bargains.

‘You want to rob me, darling?’ yelled a man holding a cauliflower in each hand. ‘Come and rob me. I’m ready, willing and past it.’

‘You’re hungry?’ Barnaby made his irritation plain. His sergeant’s capacity to lower endless piles of highly calorific foodstuffs without ever putting the slightest pressure on his belt had long been a sore point. ‘You’ve just seen off half the contents of Huntley and Palmer’s warehouse. How on earth can you be hungry?’

‘Perhaps we could pop into the canteen for a lash-up.’ Troy turned right and pushed aggressively into a traffic jam inching along the High Street. ‘After we’ve seen Mrs Hutton. And speak of the devil ...’

They had ground to a halt on a level with the Magpie’s shop front. A CLOSED sign hung on the door. There was a large tapestry hanging in the window showing a Bruegelesque scene of unbridled merrymaking. Rosy-cheeked burghers banged foaming tankards on rough-hewn planks. Snowy coifed buxoms fell out of their frocks, children in hand-cobbled footwear stuffed their faces with hunks of bread and one man lay flat on his face in the mud. Troy regarded it thoughtfully.

‘Bit like our Christmas social.’

No response. Why do I bother? he asked himself. Working my buns off trying to bring a little jollity into the miserable bugger’s life and for what? Might as well save my breath. I shall get one of Mrs Clapton’s dragons for the back window. Thank You For Not Laughing In Our Car.

‘Odd her being closed on a Wednesday. You’d think it’d be the busiest day.’

‘She must have heard about Hadleigh. I imagine there’s been quite a ring-round going on. She might still be on the premises. There’s narrow opening just here ...’

Troy swung on the wheel.

‘I said narrow!’

‘OK. OK.’ Troy responded sharply as he always did to any adverse comment on his driving. And there was certainly no problem on this occasion. Twice the width of the paint. At least.

He pulled into the large asphalt parking area at the rear of the Magpie which it shared with the Blackbird bookshop next door. A Ford Transit van and a scarlet Porsche in beautiful condition were parked there. Over the solid rear door of the Magpie was a British Telecom burglar alarm. The door itself was secured by two mortice deadlocks and flanked by long rectangular windows which were heavily barred. Barnaby knocked once and then again more firmly. There was not the slightest reverberation. He could have been rapping a block of concrete. He pressed his ear to the jamb, but could pick up no response. Troy slipped his hands through the iron bars and tapped on the glass.

‘Someone in there, chief. I think they’re coming.’ He took off his headgear, smoothed his hair and replaced the cap at a more rakish angle. Then he turned up his coat collar and rounded off the transformation by allowing a half smile, warm and, he hoped, mysteriously compelling, to play lightly about his lips. A shadow appeared on the glass and a voice, promisingly husky it seemed to Troy, said, ‘What is it?’

‘Causton CID, Mrs Hutton,’ said Barnaby. ‘Like a word, please.’

A bolt was withdrawn and then a second, heavier and needing a spot of oil. A chain rattled, a key turned in one of the mortice locks. Troy, holding his breath, realised he had lost his light but compelling smile and hurriedly tacked it on again.

‘I shouldn’t bother, Gavin.’

‘Sir?’

‘She’s too old for you.’

The smile vanished and Troy looked perturbed. This was not so much at having his mind read - the chief had always been good at that (far too good actually) - but by the heretical suggestion that anyone with more money than they knew what to do with could possibly have a sell-by date.

‘Come in.’

Laura Hutton was standing behind the door, covering her face. Barnaby presented his card. She didn’t even glance at it, but walked away towards a tiny office of glass and tongue-and-groove boarding which had been made by enclosing a small corner of the large, high-ceilinged space through which she was now leading them.

Barnaby looked around him. He could have been in the props room of Joyce’s amateur theatre group. Furniture stacked on top of itself, paintings two or three deep facing the wall. Ornaments. Cardboard boxes, with lot numbers stamped on, crammed with old cutlery and other household junk.

Her office had a tiny antique desk, the surface almost invisible beneath a Macintosh LC, telephone, fax and answering machine. The air was scented by a soapy fragrance. Barnaby guessed that she had probably heard his first knock and had washed her face in the pretty flowered hand basin before coming to the door. If this was in an attempt to conceal the fact that she had been crying it had failed, one could say miserably.

Her face was screwed up with distress and, even as Barnaby apologised for the intrusion, her eyes shimmered and brimmed with fresh moisture. At last, he thought, someone is weeping for Gerald Hadleigh.

‘I’m sorry.’ She caught the tears, now pouring down her cheeks, with the brightly coloured silk square in her hand. ‘It’s the shock ...’

Oh, more than that. The chief inspector watched her mouth, once speech had stopped, fall into a slack, grief-stricken curve. Much more than that.

‘Then you know why we’re here, Mrs Hutton?’

‘Yes. I can’t believe it. Can’t ...’ Her narrow shoulders shook and she covered her eyes with her hands. She said ‘sorry’ again.

‘I shouldn’t have let you in. I thought I could cope.’

Barnaby hesitated, unsure whether to continue. Not out of sensitivity. He was a sensitive man but it had never stopped him doing extremely insensitive things if he had to. But because he could see that she might, in all probability, go to pieces. He’d get nowhere and next time her memories of the present encounter could well make questioning her that much more difficult. He said, ‘Would you like us to come back another time?’

‘No. Not now you’re here.’ Laura reached out and switched off the desk light. In the dimness that ensued she seemed slightly more comfortable. She sat down in a padded swivel chair, the only seating in the room. Troy rested his notebook on the filing cabinet and only hoped he could read his writing. Barnaby leaned against the door. ‘Though I don’t quite understand what you want.’

‘Just a word about last night, Mrs Hutton.’

‘I see.’ She obviously didn’t see and her dull, lifeless voice indicated that neither did she care.

‘How your meeting went, for instance.’

‘The meeting? But what has that to do with ...’ She appeared not to be able to say his name.

‘Did you notice anything different about Mr Hadleigh at all?’

‘Yes. He barely spoke to anyone, which was unlike him. He was never a garrulous man, but he enjoyed talking about writing. I expected him to seize the opportunity to ask lots of questions.’

‘Did you get the impression that this withdrawal was in any way connected with the visiting speaker?’

‘No, not really. Although ... it’s strange you should say that. Because when Max Jennings’ name first came up he—’

‘You mean Mr Hadleigh?’

‘Yes, he was very put out. He actually dropped his coffee. You can still see the stain.’

‘He was opposed to the idea?’

‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. He just seemed to think it was a waste of time. We’re always asking well-known authors to come and talk to us and they never do. But in the end he agreed to ask.’

‘Why was it down to him, Mrs Hutton?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘He was the group’s secretary.’

‘A lonely business, writing,’ said the chief inspector, as people always do who’ve never done it. ‘What’s your line exactly?’

‘I’m transcribing a mass of papers I came by at a sale in Aylesbury. A lot of recipes - or “receipts” as they were called then - plus notes on running a Tudor household, animal husbandry, herbal medicines ...’ Laura hesitated then stopped at the realisation that this fiction was no longer necessary. Would never be necessary again.

‘Another Diary of an Edwardian Lady perhaps?’ She shrugged. ‘Did you all leave together yesterday evening?’

‘Except for Rex, which was a bit odd.’

‘In what way, Mrs Hutton?’ asked Troy. He smiled, but without calculation, for he could see, even in this light, that she was indeed not only too old for him but consumed by an utterly private wretchedness in which any flirtatious gesture would be grotesquely ill placed.

‘He usually dashes straight off. Sometimes before the rest of us. Worries about his dog.’

Troy nodded understandingly. He loved dogs and had a magnificent young German Shepherd, brindled cream and grey, an ex-police dog wounded during a stake-out and consequently of no further use to the Force. He asked Mrs Hutton if she had gone straight home after the meeting and she said yes.

‘And you got home when?’ asked Barnaby.

‘Just before half past ten. I only live a short distance away.’

‘And you didn’t go out again?’ She shook her head. ‘Mr Hadleigh ... would you say he was popular in the village?’

‘I’ve really no idea. I’m not involved in parish-pump matters.’

‘He was a widower I understand?’

‘That’s right - a grieving widower.’ Her harsh voice cracked. Barnaby saw her hands clench into fists as she fought for control. She stared hard at the computer screen. ‘I have to be in Gerrards Cross in half an hour to look at some furniture. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave now.’

‘More to that than meets the eye,’ said Troy, never one to mint a new phrase when an old one still had mileage. ‘My mum’s mad on that Edwardian Diary stuff. Every Christmas, every birthday, that’s all she’s on about. Tea towel, chopping board, egg cups, tea cosy - she’s got the lot. The family’s getting desperate. Soon there’ll only be the book left.’

‘That is desperate,’ said Barnaby.

‘Lunch then, chief?’

‘God, yes please.’

It was nearly three and the station canteen was half empty. Barnaby, mindful of his five-hundred-calorie allowance, took a lean beef and salad sandwich with slimmer’s mayonnaise to a separate table, unable to bear the sight of his sergeant’s robust scoffing.

Afterwards they drove back to Midsomer Worthy, beating the four o’clock bus by five minutes. It was almost dark when they parked once more outside the gates of Borodino. The bus stopped a few yards away and several people got off. Some crossed the Green, others disappeared in the opposite direction. Only three people advanced towards the policemen - a young girl with a child in a pushchair and an immensely tall, very thin elderly man who loped along in a slack, disjointed manner, long legs quite out of concordance, each apparently quite unaware of the other’s existence. He was festooned with shopping, most prominently an old-fashioned string bag stuffed with bloody parcels wrapped in newspaper. He also carried several books encircled by a tightly buckled belt, the strap of which was looped through his braces. His silver hair was in constant movement, flowing softly around his head like a shining puffball. As he came closer they could see that he was smiling, happily but inwardly, in an appreciative, reminiscent sort of way. As he opened the gate Barnaby got out of the car and crossed towards him.

‘Mr St John?’

‘Yes.’ He looked from one to the other. The smile became hopeful and interested. ‘Hullo.’

‘We’re police officers.’ Barnaby proffered his wallet. ‘Could we have a word, sir?’

‘Good heavens. Come in, come in.’

They were all on the path when Rex, turning to close the gate, spotted the portable pod. ‘Just look at that. Honoria will be quite enraged. She hates the gypsies. I myself feel one should live and let live. Is that why you’re here?’

Barnaby replied with a simple negative. He felt bad news could keep until they were at least inside the house. Rex produced a large, iron key from beneath a well-worn doormat and slid it into the equally large keyhole. A ceramic plate, painted with the words CAVE CANEM, was screwed to the door. As he opened it, and just before he stepped inside, Rex shouted, ‘Stand back’ over his shoulder.

As they entered there was a tremendous series of deep, thunderous barks and a shuddering bump as of a great weight hitting the floor overhead. Then a heavy pounding and a huge grey beast appeared, tumbling and rolling down the stairs before galloping to where Rex stood and rearing up on its back legs to embrace him.

Troy was impressed. He’d seen some dogs. Thought he had a dog and a half himself. But this one was really something. It had the size and bulk of a rough-haired, bantam-weight donkey. A generous length of rosy-pink felt unrolled itself from the animal’s mouth and, after first courteously sloshing all over Rex’s face and clothing, came to rest on its real objective, the string bag.

‘It’s the bones.’ Rex looked apologetic. ‘I’ll have to give him one otherwise we’ll have no peace.’

Troy nodded understandingly. Barnaby did not. As has been previously explained he had no interest in animals unless they were arranged in tender, nicely sauced portions around the edge of a dinner plate.

Rex opened a door, deeply scored with scratches, on their left and indicated that they should enter before he disappeared, the dog, drooling and snorting, at his heels.

Barnaby sat down on an elderly leather chaise-longue which prickled even through his overcoat. Troy, interested immediately in the contents of the room, wandered round. Three walls were lined with open shelves containing model figures of soldiers standing to attention or displaying their skill with musket and cannon. Little trays overflowed with badges and buttons. On the fourth wall were glass cases of medals, two gas masks and recruiting posters from the First and Second World Wars. Barnaby faced an angry-looking man with a walrus moustache who pointed a stern finger over the command: Kitchener Wants You! Hanging over the back of a chair was a short braided cape and pill-box hat. The hat had a narrow leather chin strap.

On a table covered with green baize, which took up most of the room, a battle was in progress. A phalanx of dark-skinned soldiers wearing tasselled hats and strange robes advanced in waves of historical caricature towards a large grey wall, pushing heavy cannon from the mouths of which depended tiny balls of fluffed-out cotton wool. Everything was rather dusty.

Rex entered holding a bottle of Tizer and three plastic tumblers stacked inside each other. He kicked the door to behind him, saying, ‘Best shut the noise out.’

And indeed the noise was formidable. Great crunchings and splinterings accompanied all the while by mumbling growls. A sort of canine fee-fi-fo-fum. With his free hand Rex let down the flap of an ugly, dark-stained bureau. Inside was an assortment of snack food; crisps, chocolate bars, cheesy biscuits, boiled sweets. There was even a jar of pickled onions. He poured out the Tizer and handed it round.

‘Now,’ he indicated his schoolboy hoard with a trembly, liver-spotted hand. ‘What can I offer you?’

‘Nothing, thank you,’ said the chief inspector.

‘There’s a fine selection here.’ He waved it into focus again. ‘Sweet or savoury. Ice cream if you prefer. A fridge full. Strawberry or vanilla. I’m afraid the macadamia brittle’s run out.’

‘No, honestly.’

‘Or I’ve got some posh nuts.’ This offer also being refused Rex made his way to a worn, old armchair, pausing briefly to adjust the folds of the cape and the tilt of the little round hat.

‘These are Montcalm’s. He wears them at the onset of every fresh manoeuvre. In his role as regimental mascot you know.’

The minds of both policemen boggled.

Rex waved at the table. ‘The Siege of Constantinople. A thrilling confrontation though, of course, with dreadful odds. The end of the Byzantine empire. Only four thousand dead but fifty thousand sold into slavery. Ahh ...’ he included both men in his sweet, pacific smile, ‘they knew how to do it in those glory days. I ask you, where’s the fun in just pressing a button? Well,’ he lowered himself, slowly and with considerable care, into his seat, ‘I expect you’re waiting to tell me why you’re here.’

Barnaby told him why they were there. Sitting in the room of pantomimic warfare and toy soldiers and explosions made of cotton wool, he described Gerald Hadleigh’s real, true death in plain language.

The effect on Rex St John was extraordinary. He stared blankly at the wall for a long moment, his mouth agape, then flung his hands over his ears as if it were possible to shut out what he had already heard. His head shook violently to and fro and he shouted, ‘It isn’t true, it isn’t true ...’ He was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Barnaby crossed the room and touched the old man on the shoulder. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘I did it. Oh God - it was me—’

‘Just a moment, Mr St John.’ Barnaby removed his hand. Troy got quickly to his feet. ‘Are you confessing to the murder of Gerald Hadleigh? If so it is my duty to warn you that anything—’

‘It was my fault. He asked me to protect him and I let him down.’ Rex’s fingers were twisted around each other like a lattice of freckled twigs. ‘What have I done? Gerald ... ohh ...’

Barnaby carried one of the wooden dining chairs up closer to the armchair, sat down and said, ‘I think you’d better tell us all about it. And take your time, there’s no hurry. No hurry at all.’

But Rex started talking straight away. It was as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of the terrible words in his mouth. They tumbled out, like the evil spirits in Pandora’s box, telling the story. How Gerald had begged not to be left alone with Max Jennings. How Rex had promised to stay till the man had left and been tricked into leaving. How he’d gone home, come back and hung around in the rain. Felt afraid, believed himself to be observed and returned home again. By the time he had finished he was crying.

‘Try and calm down a bit, sir. It’s early days to take all this on your shoulders. For all we know Mr Jennings may have nothing to do with the matter at all.’

‘Oh but surely ...’ Rex produced a large khaki square decorated with a bear and a ragged staff, the insignia of the Royal Warwickshires, and rubbed his eyes.

‘This conversation you’ve just described with Mr Hadleigh, when did it take place?’

‘Yesterday morning. He was very embarrassed. I got the impression he’d put it off till the last moment.’

‘Did he give you any idea why he didn’t want to be left alone with Jennings?’

‘Not really. Just that they’d known each other several years ago and there had been some sort of upset. “A certain amount of unpleasantness” was how Gerald put it. He admitted he’d written the invitation in such a way as to discourage a visit.’

‘So why write at all?’ asked Troy.

‘Brian got all Bolshie when Gerald demurred and said he’d do it himself. I suppose he - Gerald I mean - thought at least this way matters remained in his own hands.’

‘Do you remember who first suggested asking Mr Jennings?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Did you get the feeling that Hadleigh was actually afraid of such a meeting?’

Rex frowned so deeply he seemed to be in pain. ‘It’s tempting, isn’t it, to be wise after the event? But, to be honest, although he seemed apprehensive, I wouldn’t have put it as strongly as “afraid”.’

‘And he didn’t appear to be so during the course of the evening?’

‘Not really. Quiet and very withdrawn. I must say Max was a most affable and friendly person. Of course he may have said things, unkind things I mean, that only Gerald would have understood the meaning of.’

‘You’ve described what happened when you left the house. What makes you so sure it was Jennings who bolted the door?’

‘Because Gerald couldn’t possibly have reached it in time. He was at the far end of the hall.’

‘And then you went home?’

‘Yes,’ whispered Rex, hanging his flossy head.

‘What time was that?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t notice. But I do know what time I went back. Twelve five ack emma. That was when I saw Brian - Mr Clapton.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Coming back from the village.’

‘You sure about that, Mr St John?’ asked Sergeant Troy. ‘That he was coming back from that direction and not from a walk round the Green?’

‘Quite sure. Then I went round the back of the house—’

‘Where you felt someone was watching you?’

‘They were standing in the trees on the edge of the wood. I got this awful creepy crawling down my backbone. It was dark. I became frightened and ... deserted my post.’

‘I shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Mr St John,’ said Barnaby, knowing he was wasting his breath.

‘But to be so ... so womanish.’

Womanish, thought Troy. He wants to meet some of the women I’ve come across. They’d have his legs for breakfast. He said, ‘Why do you think Mr Hadleigh chose you to help him in this matter?’

‘I’m not really sure.’ A blush of shame mantled Rex’s still damp cheeks as he recalled the excitement and happy curiosity that had consumed him after Gerald had left.

‘You weren’t especially friendly then?’

‘Gerald didn’t seem to have any close friends. Neither do I, of course, now. They’ve all become casualties of time. I asked him round when he first moved in. That was 1983. The year that bomb in the Lebanon destroyed an embassy. Just courtesy, you know. He turned up and was nicely civil but nothing came of it. I expect I bored him with my war games.’

‘Did he speak about his past at all?’

‘Not really. But he did tell me he was a widower and that he moved here because he couldn’t bear to go on living where his wife had died.’

‘Did he say what part of the world that was?’

‘Somewhere in Kent I think. He took early retirement from the Civil Service.’

‘Any idea what branch? Or where?’

‘I got the feeling it was the Min of Ag and Fish, although I don’t suppose they call it that nowadays. And it was in London I know because he said what a terrible fag the journey was.’

‘Do you have any idea when his wife died?’

‘Just before he moved here so that would be nine - no, ten years ago.’

‘And do you know if Mr Hadleigh has been involved with anyone else since then?’

‘Involved?’ Rex looked completely baffled.

‘An affair,’ said Troy. Poor old devil. Probably been so long he’d forgotten what he’d got it for. You had to make allowances. ‘Another woman?’

‘Oh, I’m sure not. Although—’

At this point they were interrupted by a fierce scratching at the door. The noise was so loud the policemen half expected to see claws splintering through the wood.

‘It’s Montcalm. He’s finished his tea.’ Barnaby experienced a risible representation of the dog sitting up, a napkin round its neck, tucking daintily into a plate of cucumber sandwiches. ‘I’ll have to let him in.’

‘We’re almost finished, Mr St John.’

‘But he doesn’t like—’ Rex broke off, head cocked. It had gone quiet outside. Montcalm padded away. Then, after a brief pause, they heard him return at a gallop which culminated in a tremendous crash. The door panels shivered mightily under the impact.

Rex said ‘Sorry’ and let the dog in, prudently closing up the tuck shop first. It trotted twice around the room, happily wagging its plumed tail, and knocking several soldiers flying. Then it scrambled up on to the chaise-longue beside its master, transferred itself to his knees and rested its great head against his cheek.

‘We were discussing ...’ Barnaby broke off in some confusion. He found himself facing a pair of trousered legs, five feet of rough, grey, hairy hound and two intelligent, enquiring faces. It was like questioning some fabled beast from the realms of mythology.

‘Emotional friendships.’ Sergeant Troy came to the rescue. ‘I think you were about to have second thoughts, sir.’

‘Was I?’

‘You said “although”,’ the chief inspector reminded him.

‘Although what?’

Barnaby prayed for patience. Troy winked at the dog. It gave a cavernous yawn, its lolling tongue and sharp pointed teeth scarlet with bone juice.

‘Ah yes,’ remembered Rex. ‘I used to wonder if Laura didn’t have rather a pash.’

‘Any special reason for thinking so?’

Barnaby asked the question while his sergeant relished ‘pash’ and vowed to try it out on WPC Brierley.

‘Just that she was always watching him,’ said Rex. ‘With a certain expression. Rather like Montcalm when I’m about to open the Winalot.’

They talked for a while longer but Rex had little of note to add. Barnaby offered his thanks, then explained that it would be necessary for Rex to come to the mobile incident room or, after tomorrow, to the police station to have his fingerprints taken. On hearing this Rex perked up slightly, as if a visit to the pod was a sort of treat. Something to look forward to. Perhaps it was. Poor devil.

‘Who’d be old,’ said Barnaby, as they made their way back down the garden path.

‘He’s all right,’ replied Troy. ‘Got the soldiers. All those medals. Not to mention his posh nuts.’

‘What the hell sort of dog do you call that anyway?’

‘Irish wolfhound.’

‘Make a great rug.’ He strode across the Green (the grass was greyish-orange now in the sodium lighting) and climbed into the incident room. It was cosy inside and there was coffee on the go. A middle-aged couple, no doubt the last of many, were offering information which might or might not prove helpful.

Barnaby rang Amersham police station, asked them to check their electoral register for Max Jennings’ address then, while he was waiting, helped himself to a warm drink. They rang back in just under ten minutes.

‘Trouble is after a murder,’ said Sergeant Troy, picking up the A413, ‘people describe things differently from what they might have done otherwise.’

‘You mean the way they talk about the victim?’

‘That, yes. But their own experiences as well. Take St John - there he is, hanging around in Hadleigh’s back yard, supposedly keeping an eye. Now he says there was someone in the woods watching him. But did he genuinely think so at the time?’

‘Could be he’s trying to persuade himself,’ said the chief inspector, ‘to excuse the fact that he cleared off.’

‘Not much chance of proving it, what with the rain and Joe Public trampling all over the place.’

Barnaby did not reply. He was having a brief, silent rail at the malignant fates who had organised Gerald Hadleigh’s murder the night before Causton’s market day. If he had only talked to Rex earlier. Had got to know of the connection between the dead man and the visiting author. Naturally he had planned to talk to Jennings, but had presumed this would involve a few brief questions dealing mainly with the time of his departure. Bugger. In a word.

However, regret being a time-wasting and sterile occupation, Barnaby soon gave it up and turned his attention to Laura Hutton. In the light of her display of grief, Rex’s suggestion of a pash seemed to be putting it mildly. It seemed to Barnaby that she must have loved the man - and fruitlessly, or why that rasping cry, ‘That’s right - a grieving widower’?

She had fought for control afterwards, plainly regretting the slip, and so determined to make no further revelation that she had turned her back on them to end the interview. And the remark had not only been bitter but shot through with sarcasm. Was this fuelled merely by the angry resentment of a woman scorned? Or did she know something about Hadleigh’s private life that made a mockery of the man’s public sorrow over the death of his wife? When she was calmer, if it still proved necessary, he would question her again. This conclusion returned him to the present and the realisation that they had stopped driving and had started flying.

‘For God’s sake! Do you want to spread us both over the tarmac?’

‘Roads are fine now, sir.’

But Troy came down to fifty-five and forbore to comment on this further example of unjust criticism. He had never had an accident nor caused one to be had. Sailed through Police Advanced, than which there is no harder, with comparative ease. Practising his skills gave him immense pleasure. The fluid connection of clutch and gear change and finely balanced play of the wheel, the open landscape sweeping, tearing by or, conversely, the constant observation and eye for detail needed when negotiating town hazards. But he had no patience, which would forever stop him being quite as good as he thought he was. Especially he had no patience with what he thought of as his chief’s excessive caution. But then, what could you expect of a man who drove an automatic? Not that ‘drove’ was in any way the appropriate term. You just sat in the thing and it trundled you about like an old cart horse. Troy had never heard of the Frenchman who thought the servants could do his living for him but would have immediately recognised, in the idle sod, your typical automatic driver.

Mirror, signal, manoeuvre and their headlights had swallowed up the Chalfonts and were already sweeping the pretty lanes of Warren d’Evercy. Troy cruised, checking right. Barnaby, taking the other side, was the one to spot the gates. As tall and elaborate as the ones at Gresham House but in a much more elegant state. A golden M in the centre of each was held in place by a wreath of acanthus leaves. The gates were flanked by sandstone pillars atop which were a pair of well-worn and aloof-looking griffins. Discreetly set into the side of the nearest pillar was a push button and grille. Barnaby pushed and spoke. After a crackling exchange with a deeply masculine foreign accent the gates swung open.

The drive was quite long and brightly lit by what appeared to be original Victorian street lamps. There were flower beds, presently full of winter pansies and rather formal groupings of shrubs. It was attractive enough but impersonal. A bit like a public park.

The house, whilst quite grand, was also markedly unoriginal in design. Styled after the manner of a Southern ante-bellum mansion, it was fronted by six white columns and grandly positioned behind an approach of marble steps. Troy sucked his teeth with admiration. Barnaby was less impressed. The building called to his mind the shrink-wrapped Parthenon of Pearl and Dean.

As he was looking over the carved wooden lintels for a bell one of the doors swung open and a short, swarthy man stepped out. He had naked feet and was wearing tight white 501s, a loose flower-patterned shirt and several gilt chains. His dark, curly hair was wet.

Troy flashed his warrant card, saying, ‘Mr Jennings?’

‘Stavros, I am butler.’

‘Causton CID. We’d like a word with your employer, please.’

Stavros stepped back into the house and beckoned. The policemen found themselves in a large, circular hall with a domed ceiling from which depended a glittering and very lovely Venetian chandelier.

The butler set off down a corridor, leaving a trail of damp footprints. The walls of the corridor were lined with watermarked ivory silk and hung with ormolu mirrors and many original but unremarkable paintings. Overhead, at regular intervals, were more chandeliers, tiny spears of light, which shivered and tinkled as the three men walked beneath. They had passed several doors before Stavros halted in front of a mirrored wall some thirty feet in length. He pressed a button and, with a sweet, almost silent, click-clickety-click, the entire wall slowly started to fold up like a screen.

They stepped into what appeared to be a large orangery with a high, arched roof made of ribbed steel and shadowy apple-green glass. The place was crammed with exotic flora - palm trees in tubs, plants with huge fleshy leaves and Day-glo flowers the size of dinner plates, bananas and pineapples, climbers with hairy stems as thick as conger eels, giant cacti, hanging swags of richly perfumed orchids. All of this stuff dripping with moisture in the thick, steaming air.

Stavros having vanished, Barnaby and Troy crunched forward over grass of such a sizzling emerald hue it could only be fake. Discreetly dispersed amongst all this lush exuberance were various pieces of gleaming sports equipment that peered through the foliage like shy jungle creatures. Invisible speakers introduced the mellow Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass.

Barnaby and his sergeant made their way around various artificially raised beds, avoiding (or in Troy’s case tripping over) snaking hoses, before finally coming up against a filmy curtain of delicate fern. Close to they could hear rhythmical splashing. Troy pushed the curtain aside. Stepped forward. Caught his breath.

A long, narrow pool lined with turquoise tiles of such brilliance that the water shone like liquid lapis lazuli. The flowers and trees came to the very edge of the pool so that the woman, slowly swimming up and down, seemed not to be in a man-made environment at all but in some hidden grotto on a tropical island. Her coppery limbs emerged, dark and glowing, from a white one-piece swimsuit. She turned on her back and her hair streamed softly about her head.

Troy stood and stared, entranced. Surely this was Hollywood. Hollywood and Beverly Hills and Dallas, Texas. He let out his breath in a long, satiated sigh of pleasure. The woman got out and stood for a moment, water streaming from her wide bronzed shoulders and endless elegance of legs. As she turned and walked away, her neck, wrists and ankles flashed fire and Troy thought: my God - she’s swimming in her jewels. Swimming in her jewels.

He mopped his forehead before slipping off his jacket and carrying it in such a way as to conceal his own fire-works. Then he followed the boss, who was picking his way carefully over the ersatz turf.

They caught up with her in a clearing containing several loungers and wicker armchairs, none of which they were invited to occupy during the conversation that followed. There was also a drinks cart. She started to shovel shavings of ice into a tumbler with a little silver trowel, added a huge slug of gin and a quick squirt of juice from a plastic lemon. Barnaby said:

‘Mrs Jennings?’

‘Yes.’

‘We were hoping to speak to your husband.’

‘Oh?’ She threw the gin down her throat and picked up the bottle again. ‘What about?’

A hiccupy grunt, ‘Whabah?’ She climbed up on to a bar stool with some difficulty and regarded them with singular lack of interest.

‘Is he here?’ asked the chief inspector. He was wondering how old she was. The flesh on her face seemed unnaturally taut compared to that on her calves and inner thighs. The backs of her hands were veiny and her eyes, though set in wrinkle-free surroundings, were knowing and exhausted.

‘No.’ She did not elaborate. Just carried on sipping.

‘When do you expect him back, Mrs Jennings?’ Troy’s excitement subsided as he noticed the neat roll of fat around his goddess’s middle and those tired, knowledgeable eyes.

‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

‘Perhaps you could tell us what time he arrived home last night?’

‘Took three dream-easies. Wouldn’t know if the end of the world arrived last night.’

‘This meeting he attended - at Midsomer Worthy?’ She didn’t reply. Just peered at Barnaby intently as if he was slowly becoming invisible. ‘Had he discussed it with you at all?’

‘No.’ She trowelled in more icy slush, drowned it in Beefeaters, gave it a mere flirtation with the plastic lemon. Glug-glug-glug.

‘It didn’t, did it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Turn up last night.’

‘What’s that, Mrs Jennings?’

‘The end of the world.’

‘No.’

‘Just my fucking luck.’

‘Any idea where we might catch up with your husband?’ said Troy. She didn’t seem to understand the question at all. Impatience followed disenchantment. He said, extra loudly, ‘Where has he gone?’

‘Finland.’

‘Finland!’

‘Signing books.’

‘How long for?’

‘Ask his so-called secretary. Bouncing Barbara. They’re thick as thieves.’

‘Do you know what time he left?’

‘Better talk to Stavros. He runs everything. Hot breakfasts, nice clean clothes, perfect pool maintenance. Pity he’s such a rotten lay.’

She presented her back to them. Barnaby thanked her, turned on his heel (snapping the head off a crimson blossom) and withdrew.

‘No wonder he’s shoved off,’ said Troy as they went to look for the butler. The sergeant had no time for neurotic women. To be fair he had no time for neurotic men either. Troy liked people to be simple and uncomplicated, which was how he saw himself.

‘That sort of caper though’ - he meant the book signing - ‘funny way to do a runner. A bit high profile isn’t it?’

‘Well at least he’s gone somewhere we can extradite him.’ Sweat was pouring down Barnaby’s face. His clothes were sticking to his skin. ‘God I’m glad to get out of that swamp.’

They found the butler in the kitchen, an area so dazzlingly comprehensive in its display of unusual and inventive equipment that it was hard to believe the place existed merely for the preparation of food. Stavros was sitting at a stainless steel table reading Taxythromos.

‘Mr Stavros?’ said Troy.

‘Stavro.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘I am Stavros Stavro.’

‘Oh. Right. Well Mr Stavro, we’d like a word.’

‘I am all legal.’ The Greek got hurriedly to his feet, folding up his magazine. ‘Visa, papers, everything, for six months. I show you—’ He started to leave in some agitation.

‘Nothing to do with that,’ said Barnaby. ‘Just a few questions about Mr Jennings. For instance, were you around when he got home last night?’

‘I always wait up. The gates are opened from inside.’

‘What time would that have been?’

‘About one o’clock.’

‘And what sort of spirits would you say he was in?’ Stavros looked puzzled. ‘Happy? Sad?’

‘Ah - sad, yes. Quite and sad.’

‘Did he say anything about the evening? How it had all gone?’

Stavros shook his head. ‘We don’t talk like ... like ...’

‘Friends?’ suggested Troy.

‘Neh - e filos, friend. He just say the time to be called, then go to bed.’

‘What sort of bloke is he? All right to work for?’ Stavros shrugged.

‘What about Mrs Jennings?’

Troy could not resist the question nor could he keep a knot of resentment from his voice. Whilst his own fancy for the lady had been fleeting, to say the least, he loathed the thought of this oily little tosser getting his end away between those cinnamon loins. He said:

‘Tell us about this morning, Mr Stavro.’

‘What about?’

‘All about.’

‘I wake Mr Jennings, six half with tea and run the bath. Then I pack for him—’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Country things, warm tops, shirts. He wear his favourite suit.’

‘That wouldn’t be the same one he had on last night by any chance?’ asked Barnaby.

‘Yes.’ Stavros looked anxious at the chief inspector’s sudden dark frown. ‘Is there a mistake?’

‘What time did he leave?’

‘Nine and a half.’

‘Did he say for where?’

‘Heathrow.’

‘And what did he actually take with him?’

‘Two big cases and a handbag.’

‘You what?’ Troy’s eyes widened with surprise.

‘Briefcase, sergeant. Don’t be obtuse.’ Barnaby was getting more bad-tempered by the minute. ‘Did Mr Jennings say when he’d be back?’

‘No. Just he would telephone.’

‘Where are the rest of the things he was wearing last night? Shirt, socks, underwear?’

‘In the machine.’

‘Washed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Then katalava ...’

Stavros was beginning to look most apprehensive.

‘Did Mr Jennings ask you to wash the things straight away?’

‘No. I always do in the morning.’

‘Was there blood on them?’ asked Troy.

‘Blood! Mitera tou theo ...’

‘All right sir, calm down. Calm down.’ Bloody foreigners. It was like being in the middle of an opera. Any minute now it’d be ‘Nessun Dorma’ and time for the kick-off.

‘We shall need the washed clothes, Mr Stavro,’ said Barnaby. ‘Also the shoes and tie Mr Jennings wore last night if they’re available. I trust the shoes have not been cleaned.’

‘No.’ Stavros looked even more apprehensive. ‘I don’t think to get into trouble.’

‘You don’t know what trouble is, sunshine,’ said Sergeant Troy, ‘until you refuse to help the police with their enquiries.’

Troy would have liked to reassure the butler further by suggesting that a refusal to comply might well mean the precious visa being shredded and flushed down the swanny, but thought better of it. The chief was strongly against threats for the sake of threats, preferring to save them for really tight corners from whence he had been known to fire such devices with the force of a howitzer.

‘Someone will come along tomorrow from our scene-of-crime department to collect the stuff,’ he was explaining now. ‘Just point it all out to them. Don’t handle anything yourself - all right? There’s one more thing ...’

Troy took down a detailed description of Max Jennings’ Mercedes and the registration number.

Stavros saw them off the premises, perspiring with relief. As they climbed into the car he rose on the balls of his feet as if preparing for flight.

‘Imagine living in that.’ Barnaby, looking back at the house, spoke with a certain scorn. He wound the window down slightly, letting in a rush of pneumonia-bearing night air. ‘Talk about medallion man writ large.’

Not knowing what to say, for he had loved the house and everything in it, Troy shivered and kept silent.

At roughly the time that Barnaby and Troy were speeding towards Warren d’Evercy, Sue Clapton, having washed up and cleared away, was preparing the next day’s lunch boxes. Chopping celery and red cabbage for fibre, adding raisins for energy before mixing in walnuts (lineolic acid and vitamin B). Adding her own special lemon dressing in a little glass jar. Taking endless trouble as always, quite unaware that Mandy swapped the fresh salad and home-made bap each day for crisps, Coke and a Mars bar.

Sue’s husband and daughter had both been late home. Brian had been whisked off by two of his colleagues for a drink after school where, quite misunderstanding their requests that he should tell them all about the drama, he had bored them both rigid with a mercilessly detailed update of Slangwhang For Five Mute Voices.

Amanda, casually mentioning that she’d only been fast asleep while a murder was going on next door, that’s all, found her company, for the first time in her life, in great demand. The absolute superlative was when Haze Stitchley, who was well wicked and had her own gang, asked Mandy round after school for a takeaway and video (Vampire Sex Slaves).

Neither of them thought to ring Sue who, by the time they finally did arrive home, was frantic with worry. Mandy, smelling strongly of wine, was unrepentant. Brian, perhaps recalling his own moment of fear in the head’s office, felt guilty. Guilt made him bluster and shout. Neither wanted any supper, a delicious steamed onion pudding with ginger sauce, so Sue ate alone, forcing food down a throat closed tight with anger. Now she added a Cox’s pippin to Brian’s box and fitted a ripe banana around Mandy’s salad bowl.

Next door the television blared. Brian was laughing in the enforced, unnaturally loud way he had when he was not at all amused but desperate to take part in whatever Mandy was enjoying. Sue listened to them chortling away. Daddy and his little girl. She didn’t understand how they could. Not when someone living so close had just died. And in such a terrible manner.

With so much noise her head was splitting. Funny how the children at play school never affected her like this, no matter how much racket they kicked up. Sue wrapped herself in a shawl, stepped outside into the back yard and closed the door behind her. In the windless dark a blackbird chirruped, sounding as if he were in the old apple tree. The contrast between the sweetness of his song and the ugly cacophony in her sitting room made her want to weep.

Eventually it was turned off and Mandy came into the bathroom to clean her teeth. Sue could see her formless shape behind the thick, wavy glass. After she had spat her final spit Mandy slammed off and, moments later, Nirvana came blasting through her bedroom window. The blackbird gave up. Brian came out.

He said sternly, ‘We have to talk,’ and held the kitchen door open for her to enter. Feeling like a child reporting for punishment Sue went back inside.

Once there and seated Brian, wound up like a spring, seemed unable to get going. He drummed a little on the edge of the fridge and fiddled with the plastic letters, turning ‘Hello’ into ‘Holel’. Then he sucked the insides of his cheeks and played with his beard. Sue was familiar with this mood of evasive punchiness. It meant he was going to attack her but was not sure where best to begin. She began her calming routine. Inhale to a count of ten, exhale twelve, hands linked loosely in lap. Visualise landscape of tranquil beauty, e.g. the Bounty Bar island.

‘I couldn’t believe it. Just Simply Could Not Believe It.’

‘What’s that, Brian?’

‘Gerald was discovered first thing this morning? Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘Yes. Poor Mrs Bundy found him.’ One of these days I will correct you and you’ll die of shock.

‘Something like ten o’clock?’

‘Around then.’ And so shall I, probably.

‘And ... And ...’ But it was no good, disbelief had become too much for Brian. He had to break off and wag his head about before being able to continue. ‘You actually let me know at three.’

‘I explained that—’ The island had white sands and curling, creamy ocean waves, all beneath a shimmering sky.

‘Five hours later!’

‘Yes. I was—’ Plus a beautiful bird of paradise with a furled rainbow tail.

‘But surely there’s a telephone here? I distinctly recall paying several extremely large bills.’

And who runs those up? ‘I didn’t get back from play school until one, Brian. The police came and explained what had happened and then the reporters arrived ...’ Sue’s voice quavered. A cloud hung over the brazen meridian. ‘They just pushed past.’

‘They wouldn’t have pushed past me,’ cried Brian, fiddling up Llohe. ‘Licensed manipulators of populist greed.’

‘I rang as soon as they’d gone but—’

‘But, but. But by then that Morse clone and his fascist sidekick were at the school acting as if they were in some cretinous telly series. God - I could have written better dialogue in my sleep.’

I didn’t think he was a fascist. I thought he was sweet. He’s got a little girl who would just love a picture of Hector.

‘They must have burned up the road getting there. Banking on us not having time to talk. Trying to trick me.’

‘Trick you, Brian?’ Momentarily Sue was so surprised she forgot her ironic counterpoint. ‘Trick you into what?’

‘Well ...’ Brian stared hard at his wife as if testing her ingenuousness. There was a long pause. The problem was a tricky one. How to find out what a person knows without asking them, in so many words, how much they know. Oh hell.

‘I mean - take for instance all those asinine questions. What time did we get home and go to bed? Did we go out again? Did we hear the car leave? I don’t know what you told them.’

‘That I went up around quarter to eleven, that I couldn’t get off to sleep and that I did hear the car leave.’ Sue looked up from her quietly folded hands. ‘What did you tell them, Brian?’

‘What d’you mean, you couldn’t sleep? You were well away when I came up. Snoring your head off.’

Sue, who always pretended to be well away whenever Brian was in the bedroom, lifted her wide, earth-mother shoulders in a resigned sort of way.

‘You didn’t say I’d gone out for a bit of a walk then?’

‘No. Did you?’

‘After I’d finished checking the homework. Round the Green. Just to blow—’ Brian restored the letters on the fridge to their most popularly accepted distribution. ‘God - that’s typical of you, that is. Bloody typical.’

Sue started to cry. Brian picked up the Guardian, came across a Make This The Year You Learn To Write advertisement and vented his wrath by cutting it out and sending it to Jeffrey Archer.

That night Midsomer Worthy was slow to settle. The Old Dun Cow was packed with professional journalists and morbid nosy parkers jostling for the locals’ attention. The air was shot through with sparkling dialogue along the lines of: I suppose, living here, you must have known him - Oh, sorry, what are you drinking by the way?

And not a manjack among the villagers was found wanting. Lowering doubles and triples at the speed of light, they told what they knew, then conjured from the ripe atmosphere what they did not. And although none of them got it even remotely right, the dead man would still have been astonished at the luxurious complexity of their imaginings. All left the hostelry at closing time, tired and emotional, aware of nothing so much as value given and a job well done.

Several of them staggered past Plover’s Rest which, though now sealed, still showed a police presence. And the pod was still there. Troy had gone home, but Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby was inside reading through information which had come in during the day, drinking coffee and waiting for the airport police at Heathrow to return his call. He was whacked and on the point of giving up when the telephone rang.

They were sorry for the delay. There had been several flights to Finland on the eighth but at this hour the relevant offices were locked so it had taken some time to raise the information he required. But they were now in a position to inform him that none of the flights in question had carried a passenger travelling under the name of Max Jennings.