Written in Blood

The Woman in Black

Barnaby was in the incident room early next morning, bad-tempered, greatly disturbed by his own anxieties and unrefreshed. He had spent the night drifting in and out of sleep and bad dreams. He couldn’t remember what the dreams were but woke fighting for breath and wrestling with the duvet, which seemed to be pressing itself over his nose and mouth.

He had got up at six in the winter’s dark, switched off the alarm and made himself some tea. Then later, as Joyce slept on, followed this with a delicious and deeply unhealthy fried breakfast, sneering at a wistful-looking kitten as he turned the bacon. The postman came while he was eating. Two gardening catalogues and the phone bill.

Barnaby put the dishes in the sink, made some fresh tea and took a cup to Joyce. By the time he came down again there was a tight squeezing between his shoulder blades that presaged indigestion and Kilmowski was sitting by the fridge mewing anxiously.

‘Hasn’t taken you long to suss where the nosh is, has it?’ He put on his coat and scarf. ‘Well you needn’t get your feet under the table. They’ll be back in two weeks.’

Troy approached his boss treading on eggshells, for he knew the old man in this mood. No matter what the sergeant said or did nothing would be right. And if he just stood there saying or doing nothing then his thoughts would be for it. Or his choice of clothing. Or the way he combed his hair. Or the shape of his left leg. Might as well go and stick his head in a bucket and have done with it. He put the cup and saucer down with extreme caution.

‘What d’you call this?’

‘Coffee, sir.’

‘It’s cold.’

‘But I’ve only just—’

‘Don’t argue with me.’

‘No, sir.’ Troy hesitated. ‘Shall I get some more?’ A brown bottle was being unscrewed and tablets that he recognised tipped out. Two were swilled down with the scalding coffee. Barnaby’s eyes bulged and sweat broke out across his forehead.

‘Would you like some water, chief?’ Troy received a glance to strip his teeth of their enamel.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Of course not. I just—’ The air was cleft by a furious gesture with a bunched fist and the sergeant tiptoed off.

But in the corridor his oppression was lightened with miraculous suddenness for, if life at Causton police station left a lot to be desired, one of the things it left most to be desired was now walking straight towards him. The delectably blonde Audrey Brierley. A source of grievous bodily pleasure if ever there was one.

Troy indicated the door through which he had just passed, gave a warning grimace and drew his thumbnail graphically across his throat. Audrey narrowed her baby blues, said, ‘Promises, promises!’ and walked on by.

Barnaby closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands, withdrawing from the clattering keys, shrilling phones and murmurs of conversation into a dark interior quietness and ordering his thoughts for the day’s briefing, which he had convened for nine thirty. He stayed like this for ten minutes, made a few notes and got up from his desk.

The chief inspector attempted to run, given the rigid police hierarchy, a democratic incident room. Time permitting, he would listen and talk to anyone, aware that intelligent insights could as well be present in the minds of the lowly ranked as elsewhere. And, should that prove to be the case, he would frequently give credit where it was due. This by no means common attitude meant that he was respected (if not always liked) by the majority under his command.

There would be two enquiry teams. The first, which would include several civilian machine operators, stayed in the incident room manning the telephones and computers, searching for and collating information. The second, the foot sloggers, went out and about, looking, listening, asking questions. Thirty people fell silent and paid attention as Barnaby made his way to the far end of the room.

He stood before a wall of aerated panels that strongly resembled grey Ryvita. On these were pinned still photographs plus enlarged freeze frames from the video made at the scene of the crime and when Barnaby opened by describing the case as a very messy one it was only too clear what he meant. A blow-up of Hadleigh’s wedding picture was also displayed, along with photographs of the murder weapon. Barnaby recapped only briefly on the information gathered so far, for they all had notes on yesterday’s interviews.

‘We now know that Jennings hasn’t flown to Finland, or anywhere else come to that, from Heathrow. We’re checking other airports today. We’ve also telexed the seaports and might pick up something there. Obviously the fact that he’s cleared off after lying about where he’s going is a cause for some concern. On the other hand we must remember that after leaving Hadleigh’s he drove home, went to bed and this morning had his valet pack for him and ate breakfast before leaving. This does not indicate a man in a hurry.

‘If he killed Hadleigh there was no way he could know that the body had not been found. Rex St John seems to have made his role as minder very plain so, for all Jennings knew, the minute his car drove off St John was back round there. The murder would have been discovered, the police notified, St John’s story told and Jennings easily apprehended. We also have to take into account the nature of the attack. This sort of severe bludgeoning indicates someone in a fit of rage, which argues against premeditation. I wouldn’t wish to push this suggestion too far. A murder can, of course, be coldly planned and still emotionally carried out, but I’d like you to bear this in mind.

‘The house was not secure, which means we can’t discount the possibility of some opportunist or vagrant nipping in. Aggravated burglary happens, as we all know, but I feel here the odds are against it. The cleaning lady is sure nothing was taken from downstairs. Unfortunately, upstairs she will not go. I had a further word with her last night however and it seems that, as I suspected, a large brown case is missing from the small bedroom. It was there the previous week when she cleaned through and I think it not unreasonable to assume that whoever emptied the chest of drawers used it to carry the contents away. I’m hoping SOCO will be able to give us some idea what they were.’

‘So are we looking at robbery as a motive after all then, sir?’ asked a young detective constable, shiningly alert and crisp as a biscuit.

‘Hard to say at this stage, Willoughby. The theft might have been an afterthought, yet I can’t help thinking, as a hugely expensive watch was left behind, that it was also quite specific. Mrs Bundy says the drawers were always kept locked.’

Inspector Meredith, who had so far sat in a distant silence picking his thoughts over (for all the world, Barnaby commented later, like unclaimed jewels), spoke up: ‘Using the suitcase as the means to hand would surely indicate that matey-boy did not expect to find what he did or he would have come prepared to take the clobber away. After all, you can hardly conceal that much stuff about your person.’

‘Indeed you can’t, Ian,’ replied Barnaby and heard, just behind his left shoulder, a sharp intake of breath and intuited, indeed positively shared, his sergeant’s antagonism.

Inspector Ian Meredith, heading the outdoor team, had been the object of Troy’s resentful envy since the day of his arrival. One of the short-cutters. A Bramshill flyer. Out of Oxbridge with his degree round his neck like an Olympic gold. Made up to sergeant before he’d taken his stripey scarf off, inspector in four years, plus, most galling of the lot, connections in high places. And without the grace to wear this largesse lightly.

‘Nevertheless,’ continued Barnaby, ‘it’s an odd house that doesn’t contain a couple of cases or travelling bags, so I don’t think we can read too much into the fact that he came apparently unprepared.’

That’s told him, said Troy’s supercilious mask. ‘Mateyboy’ indeed! Jesus. He smirked at Inspector Meredith and was disconcerted to discover that the man was nodding his head in agreement. Some people just didn’t seem to know when they were being put down.

‘We’ll keep the search going on both cars, but I imagine you’ll find Hadleigh’s in some local garage having a checkup. It’s the Mercedes that I suspect we shall find elusive.’

‘What sort is it?’

‘In your notes, Inspector Meredith.’

‘A 500 SL sir,’ said Detective Constable Willoughby, simultaneously.

‘Oh, yes.’

Meredith’s acknowledgement was of a casualness to imply that all his friends and relatives had one. Trouble was, thought Barnaby sourly, they probably did. He said: ‘I want you to find out all there is to know about Hadleigh. Gossip and hearsay as well as what’s officially on record. We’re told that he was married to a woman called Grace, surname unknown, and that they lived in Kent, where she died of leukaemia. He worked for the Civil Service, supposedly in the Ministry of Agriculture. Once all this has been verified we can start building on it. The video of the crime scene is now available. I shall expect you all to make yourselves familiar. That’s all.’

The outdoor team disappeared. The rest swung away from him on their swivelchairs involving themselves in the glint and dazzle of their VDUs. Barnaby strode off to his office, where he could use the telephone in reasonable peace and quiet.

He had the number of Max Jennings’ publishers and had already rung twice without reply. It was now nine forty-five. He picked up the receiver and tried again. Nothing. Barnaby sucked his teeth with a rather self-righteous click, for he had the early riser’s puritanical disdain for slugabeds. At last a Sloaney female accent responded.

He stated his business and was put through to publicity where, neatly fielding considerable curiosity, he asked if it was the case that Mr Jennings was currently on a book-signing tour in Finland. This remark was repeated aloud at the other end, causing much merriment.

‘We’re in stitches here,’ said his contact, unnecessarily. ‘We can’t get Max into his local bookshop under cover of darkness to sign as much as a paperback. Let alone the full cheese and wine at Waterstones. Someone’s been pulling your leg.’

‘So it seems.’ Barnaby sounded very regretful. ‘I wonder ... would there be any details about Mr Jennings you could perhaps let me have? Publicity handouts - that sort of thing?’

‘Well.’ She turned away from the phone and he heard a quiet exchange. ‘There’s a biog. we send out. It’s pretty up to date. I could fax you that.’ As he gave the number there was more murmuring and his contact said, ‘We think you should talk to Talent.’

‘Who?’

‘Talent Levine, his agent. Have you got a pen?’ Barnaby wrote the details down. ‘They’ll be able to help you much more than us. He’s been on their books from the year dot.’

Barnaby thanked her, hung up and sat back in his chair. The tensions of the briefing over, and his indigestion almost entirely abated, he discovered to his surprise that he was hungry. Or at least (for breakfast was only two hours gone) that he fancied a little something. Telling himself that he could always cut out lunch he wandered into the corridor to see what was available in the automat.

Like most of its kind it offered only garishly wrapped and highly calorific items. Barnaby selected a whirly Danish studded with glacé cherries and put his money in.

Further down the corridor Sergeant Troy emerged from the Gents reeking of nicotine. Smoking had, from January first, been banned in the station under a Thames Valley ruling and was now allowed only in the toilets. These, by the end of the day, resembled Dante’s Inferno with the shades of uniformed or plain-clothed sinners diving in and out of swirling clouds of smoke.

Troy moved on light, quick feet. Spring-heeled Jack. Exciting times were in the offing. The case was opening up and, whichever way the next few hours crumbled, they seemed to be fairly full of Eastern promise and relatively short on paperwork. Then he spotted the boss and wiped the pleasure from his countenance. Just to be on the safe side.

‘I’d like some coffee with this.’ Holding up the cellophane packet. Walking away.

‘Right, chief.’

When Troy produced the coffee, Barnaby was on the blower. The sergeant put the cup down, less warily this time, for he could see things were looking up. And he was actually thanked. Just one raised finger. Which made a nice change.

Barnaby listened, relishing the voice. Cigar rich. Garrick Club fruity. Port and nuts and Armagnac. The brazen clash of money, with a wheeler-dealer edge.

‘The only things Max Jennings signs are contracts,’ rumbled Talent Levine. ‘Why exactly do you want to speak to him?’

‘We are investigating a sudden death. Mr Jennings was one of several people who spent time with the deceased yesterday evening.’ Barnaby explained the circumstances in some detail.

‘Talking to some scribbling amateurs in the back of beyond? I don’t believe it.’

Barnaby gave assurances that such was indeed the case even as he wondered how the inhabitants of Midsomer Worthy would regard being reassigned to the polar ice caps.

‘He wouldn’t even talk to Lynn Barbour,’ continued Talent. ‘Mind you, that was on my advice.’

‘We’re fairly sure that Mr Jennings knew the man who issued the invitation quite well. Did he ever mention the name Gerald Hadleigh to you?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘It would be going back a few years.’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘We’re getting some background material on Mr Jennings from his publishers—’

‘Why?’ Barnaby was momentarily silenced. ‘I want to know much more than you’re telling me, chief inspector, before I start answering questions about my client without his permission.’

‘Very well. The facts are these. Mr Hadleigh was murdered late last night. As far as we know your client was the last person to see him alive. Now Mr Jennings, after giving false information about his destination, seems to have disappeared.’

There are pauses and pauses. You would have needed a wrecker’s ball to dent this one. Eventually Max’s agent said, ‘Christ almighty.’

‘Do you have any idea at all where he might be?’

‘Absolutely none.’

‘If he gets in touch—’

‘I need to take advice on this one, chief inspector. I’ll get back to you. Perhaps later today.’

‘I’d appreciate that, Mr Levine.’ An interruptive growl. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. Ms Levine.’

He hung up, murmuring to himself, ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

Troy remained silent. Even if he had the chutzpah this was no time to correct the chief’s grammar. Barnaby once more turned his attention to the pastry. The cherries, so glossy and seductive under wraps, proved to be as hard as wine gums. He took a bite, felt a savage twinge in his tooth and flung the remains down in disgust.

‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, Gavin.’

‘It’s the same everywhere.’ Troy removed the empty, coffee-stained polystyrene beaker and dropped it, together with the pastry, in the bin. ‘Maureen’s stopped putting the news on.’

He produced a snowy handkerchief, smoothed the rest of the crumbs into his hand and disposed of them. Then he wiped his palms and fingers carefully.

‘When you’ve finished dusting,’ said Barnaby, long familiar with his sergeant’s obsessively meticulous behaviour but still capable of being entertained, ‘I want you to go and see Clapton again. Lean a bit. Find out just what he was up to on Tuesday night when he was supposed to be taking this quick turn round the Green.’

‘I’m so glad you could come round.’

‘We were lucky. Me with a break. You on afternoons.’

Sue dunked tea bags in stone mugs. Camomile for herself, Sainsbury’s Red Label for Amy. There was a home-made oat and carob slice each, too. All on a tray balanced on the cracked old Rexine pouffe in front of the fire.

Amy took her tea, murmuring, and by no means for the first time, ‘A terrible day.’

‘Oh, yes - terrible. Terrible.’

They had talked about it and talked about it. Amy starting even before she had taken her coat off.

It was twenty-four hours now since the police had called at Gresham House. After their visit, and the dreadful revelations they had left behind, Amy had naturally expected that she and Honoria would sit down and slacken their disbelief together. Absorb the shock (as she and Sue were doing now) over a warm, comforting drink. But Honoria had appeared satisfied merely to deliver a run-of-the-mill diatribe describing the sociological forces that had combined to bring the criminal element so firmly into their midst. These, though varied, were neither wide ranging nor original.

Ignorant and indulgent parents, lax teachers, spoon-feedings by the state from the cradle to the grave and easy access to the depravities of television. Contempt for authority came next, closely followed by the abandonment of corporal and capital punishment and the deliberately malicious council policy of siting municipal dwellings a mere thieving’s distance from the homes of decent, tax-paying citizens. All or any of these heinous components could, it seemed, be permed any which way to produce the thing that had killed Gerald Hadleigh - for that he came from the dregs of society went without saying. Foolishly, Amy had argued.

‘Aristocrats killed people. Elizabeth the first was always chopping heads off.’

‘Royalty is different.’ Honoria had stared at Amy with her round, hard pebbly eyes. ‘If you’re so interested you should have asked that turnip-faced hobnail of a policeman if you could go over and have a look.’

‘Honoria! What an awful—As if I would ever—Ohhhh.’

Amy’s fingers trembled anew as she broke off a piece of her carob slice. To be made to feel like a morbid snooper, like those awful people parked on the Green. She didn’t want to see anything. Indeed felt quite ill at the thought. But surely (and she had said so) it was no more than human to wish to discuss such an appalling incident on one’s own doorstep.

‘In that case,’ Honoria had replied, ‘I’m glad I’m not human.’

‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ said Sue, as Amy passed this on.

They had cried a little together, as they had separately the previous day. Sue had wept when the news hawks had finally left her in peace, Amy during the brief moments she had spent in St Chad’s after visiting Ralph’s grave.

Not knowing if Gerald had been religious, and not being especially religious herself, she had kept her prayer simple, merely asking that his soul should be accepted in heaven and there find peace. Of course all this sort of thing would be properly and officially attended to at the funeral, but Amy had a vague notion that time was thought to be relevant in these matters and that there should not be too much delay.

Sue spooned thick meadow-flower honey into her tea. ‘I got in touch with Laura and Rex,’ she said,‘when I knew you were coming, in case they wanted to join us. She was really short with me and Rex seemed to be out when I went round.’

‘Oh well.’ Amy was not really disappointed. She loved sitting in this room with Sue, the fire crackling, throwing shadows on the dark red walls. It was like being in a snug cave.

They had become friends almost by default - drawn together as two English people might be if marooned in a foreign country, reaching out in their isolation, sensing immediately a kindred spirit. Without words each understood the other’s situation. They never needed to ask, as outsiders might (and frequently did), why on earth do you put up with it?

Instead they offered comfort, encouragement and advice. Sometimes they would let off steam, angrily berating their oppressor’s behaviour. But, in the main, they struggled to remain humorous and detached. What else could you do?

Neither allowed the other to slide into self-pity, or take unnecessary blame. When they had first started meeting Sue had done a lot of that, explaining that Brian only acted the way he did because she was slow and not very bright. Amy had knocked that notion severely on the head.

They had an escape plan, of course. Sue was to become a famous illustrator of children’s books and buy a little cottage with room for just herself and Mandy, if she wanted to come. There would be a garden with space for ducks and chickens. Amy would sell her block-buster and get a house not too far away. It would be spacious, airy and modern, for she had had enough of clanking radiators and stone floors and smelly, mildewed cupboards.

And when they met they would have slow, thoughtful conversations with breathing spaces. Not like now, when they talked and laughed and interrupted each other non-stop but always with one eye on the clock. Amy said they were like two nuns from a silent order vouchsafed a once-a-year speaking day.

‘I keep wishing,’ said Sue - they were still discussing the murder - ‘that I’d looked at my clock when I heard Max drive away.’

‘How were you to know? Anyway I don’t see that it would help the police that much.’

‘It would give them a time when Gerald was still alive.’

‘I thought post-mortems sorted all that out.’

The phrase struck them both with a deep chill and they looked at each other in some distress.

‘I expect they’ll have to talk to him - Max I mean. It’s so embarrassing. Us mixing him up in something like this.’

‘Could be worse.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘Could have been Alan Bennett.’

They burst into nervous giggles, ashamed at such levity yet also knowing relief. Then, acknowledging that the time had come to put their reflections on death aside, Sue said, ‘Something nice happened yesterday. Did you have the policeman with red hair?’

‘Yes.’

‘“Fox” I called him at first,’ said Sue, for she anthropomorphised everyone. ‘But then I had second thoughts. His lips were so thin and his teeth so sharp that I decided he should be “Ferret”. And the bulky one’s “Badger”.’

‘Oh yes, I agree with “Badger”,’ said Amy. She agreed with ‘Ferret’ as well, for she hadn’t liked Troy much at all. ‘What about him?’

‘He wants to buy a painting of Hector. For his little girl.’

‘That’s brilliant! How much will you ask?’

‘Heavens, I don’t know.’

‘Twenty pounds.’ Sue squealed her disbelief. ‘At least. He’s getting an original Clapton. Tell him one day it’ll be worth a fortune.’

Amy knew she was wasting her breath. Sue would probably just mumble, ‘Oh, that’s all right’ when the time came. Or shake her Greenpeace collecting tin, with soft timidity, in Ferret’s general direction. She was saying something else.

‘I still haven’t heard from Methuen.’

‘But that’s good news.’ Sue had submitted some paintings and a story nearly three months ago. ‘If they hadn’t wanted your book they’d have sent it back straight away.’

‘Would they?’

‘Of course. It’s being passed round to get lots of opinions. Depend upon it.’

‘Amy.’ Sue smiled across at her friend. ‘What would I do without you?’

‘Likewise.’

‘How is Rompers?’ asked Sue. ‘Have you managed to do any more?’

She did not ask out of mere politeness. The immensely baroque structure of Amy’s book impressed Sue enormously and she followed every twist and turn of the narrative with the deepest interest. It seemed to her wonderfully gripping and she was sure that, should Amy ever snatch enough secret moments to finish it, Rompers would be a great success.

‘Well, believe it or not, after such shattering news, I did six pages last night.’

Amy had been quite perturbed on their completion unsure whether writing under such circumstances meant she was a true professional or an amateur with a heart of stone.

‘Has Rokesby,’ Sue was continuing eagerly, ‘discovered that Araminta has the same surname as the Duke of Molina because she is his sister and not, as Rokesby believed when he rejected her, his wife?’

‘He has, yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Too late. Hurt almost beyond human endurance she has fled to the Corsican Riviera with Black Rufus.’

‘The notorious drug baron!’

‘She believes him to be a Save the Children representative.’

‘And Burgo?’ Burgoyne was Sue’s favourite. Ebony-haired and pantherine, he spoke twelve languages, often simultaneously. He had violet eyes, an olive skin the beauty of which was enhanced rather than disfigured by a zigger zagger duelling scar, and a name respected and feared on the world’s international espionage circuit.

‘Suspended from his heels in a rat-infested bauxite mill somewhere on the Caymans.’

‘Ohhh ...’ Sue’s eyes shone and she clapped her hands at the sheer extravagance of it all. ‘How absolutely wonderful!’

‘It’s not at all wonderful. That isn’t supposed to happen till page three hundred and something.’

‘Where are you now, then?’

‘Forty-two. I’ve got a riot of plot and nothing else.’

‘But Amy, that’s what bestsellers are.’

‘Really?’

‘You won’t give up?’

‘Good heavens, no. And neither must you.’

Amy got up and looked out of the window, something she had done several times since her arrival. Honoria had gone to the post office to collect a parcel of books from the London Library. She had gone in person this time as the need to harangue Mr and Mrs Sandell had yet again become paramount. A letter was recently delivered to Gresham House with a slight tear in the envelope and the flap barely secure. This could mean a ten-minute trounce or a lecture lasting half an hour and the length of the queue behind Honoria would have no bearing on the matter.

Even as she watched, Amy told herself what nonsense this surveillance was. After all she was not, technically, a prisoner. On the contrary she seemed to be out of the house as often as she was in. Running errands, delivering messages (or rather edicts), fetching and carrying. But always conscious that the time used was not her own.

And Honoria seemed to have a built-in radar that kept a most accurate track of her minion’s movements. If Amy went swiftly and efficiently about her business, looking neither to right nor left, deliberately depriving herself of the warmth of human contact, all would be well. But let her so much as stop briefly to comment on the weather, pat an animal or ask after someone’s health and before she had even stepped across the threshold on her return there would ring out, ‘Where have you been?’

Honoria knew nothing of Amy’s meetings with Sue. If she found out they would be stopped. How, Amy could not even begin to guess, but she was sure that it would be so. Even if Honoria knew they were a lifeline. Especially if she knew they were a lifeline.

‘There she is!’

Amy jumped away from the window, suddenly pale. Sue scrambled to her feet, catching the alarm, hating it when Amy so vividly demonstrated her subservience, uneasily aware that in the quick, dismayed movements lay a mirror image of her own.

As Amy moved quickly to the door, Sue shouted, ‘Wood! Wood!’

‘Gosh - I nearly forgot.’

Sue ran into the back yard, where a bundle of branches always lay ready. Amy’s excuse for her walk. They hugged goodbye on the step and Sue watched Amy race down the path and speed away, as if stapled to the wind.

She turned back into the house. It was not until she was packing her box for play school that she recalled the one thing above all others that had been worrying her and that she had meant to talk to Amy about. How could she have forgotten something that had occupied her mind so constantly? Now the question once more possessed her. Why, when Brian had simply walked briskly once round the Green on the night of Gerald’s murder, had he been absent from the house for well over three quarters of an hour?

Brian’s drama class had reconvened but was not going well. He had spent the first fifteen minutes trying to get them off the subject of murder. Starting with questions about Gerald the conversation had expanded rapidly to cover serial killers, the chain-saw massacre, vampirism and necrophilia - the latter dead boring, according to Collar.

In vain he had dragged them through a warm-up, got them pinching their cheeks to promote alertness, rolling their heads (‘let those cannon balls go’) and pretending to be clowns on unicycles to fire their imaginations. The minute it was over they were back on the same subject.

‘You being his friend, I reckon the filth would’ve let you see him.’

‘I didn’t want to—’

‘They say his head were well bashed in.’ Boreham’s eyes shone. ‘I bet his brains fell out.’

‘Different from you then,’ said Collar. ‘Bash you from here till Christmas your brains wouldn’t fall out.’

‘Why’s that then, Collar?’ asked little Bor, knowing his place and, for once, his lines.

‘’Cause you keep them up your arse.’

‘All right you lot,’ Brian bleated. He clapped his hands and adopted his ‘lost in the magical world of theatre’ expression. ‘Let’s go on. Have you all brought your scripts?’

They stared at him in deep incomprehension. He sighed, recognising the moment, for there had been many such. And yet, how rosy it had all seemed on day one. There they were, his raw material. There he was, a gifted Svengali ready to unlock talent and enthusiasm that a plodding, authoritarian educational system had all but vanquished Under his concerned tutelage they would expand and flower. Eventually their lives, immeasurably enriched, would intermingle with his own. Then they would be not teacher and pupils but friends. Lately, by some indulgently tortuous manoeuvre of his mind, Brian had seen one of them - preferably Edie or Tom - becoming famous and adopting his mentor’s surname in gratitude. Like Richard Burton.

Brian acknowledged no multiplicity of motives in all this. He gave, they took. He chose not to admit the charge he got in return. Those heady, fearful moments when an improvisation got out of hand and violence scented the air. (Brian had a warmly sentimental attitude towards violence, largely because he had never been around when any was being dished out. He referred to it sometimes as grace under pressure, tossing the phrase as casually into a conversation as if it had been his own.)

But the truth was that these moments reflected uncomfortably similar disturbances in his own heart. Repressed, they fuelled his dreams, spawning lubricious disorder. Why only last night—

Brian, struggling to quell these torrid recollections, found the Carter twins in his direct line of vision. Today Tom was in a Confederate Army greatcoat and tight snakeskin trousers. He sported a button showing a police helmet over the slogan ‘DESTROY THE HUMPBACKED PIGS’.

Edie rose from a circle of unseamed felt like a flower from a grubby black calyx. The skirt was slashed to the waist and worn over a tiny pair of striped fur shorts. Brian’s skin darkened still further at his first glimpse of these raffish tormentors. He took a deep breath, got down on his haunches and said, ‘What I’d really like is to end this play with what is known in the business as a coo dee tayartray.’

‘We had one of them,’ said little Bor, ‘but the wheel came off.’

‘A dazzling effect to stun and amaze.’

‘Sounds lovely,’ said Edie.

‘But one does have to work up to this sort of thing and, quite frankly, I’m not at all sure we’re in a recruitment mode in every sphere.’

‘Fact is Bri,’ said Denzil, ‘100% British Made’ according to the stencil across his forehead, ‘what we’d really like to do is something by ourselves.’

‘Yeah.’ Collar was enthusiastic. ‘I bet we’d be real good.’

‘I hardly think so.’ Brian felt shut out and rather hurt that they could even think of such a thing. ‘You’d never have the discipline for a start.’

There was a chorus of ‘oh yes we woulds.’

‘OK, where are the computer print-outs you promised to learn DLP at our last rehearsal?’

‘What’s DLP?’ asked little Bor.

‘Dick-licking pervo,’ said Denzil, quickly rewarded by a full house of guffaws. He pushed his tongue out as far as it would go and wagged it about, spraying the air with spittle.

‘We could try though, Brian,’ said Edie, ‘couldn’t we?’

‘If you insist.’ He could refuse her nothing. ‘But I must remind you that we’re running very short of time. I know yesterday’s interruption wasn’t your fault, but even before the police arrived we’d got nowhere. Messing about being chickens does not help us produce a text.’

‘I don’t see why chickens shouldn’t be in a play,’ said Collar. ‘People gotta eat.’

‘Wotcha think of Gavin Troy, Brian?’ asked Denzil.

‘Who?’

‘The red-headed git in the leathers.’

‘He seemed all right.’

‘He’s a bastard,’ continued Collar.

‘Nearly broke Denzil’s arm.’

‘Goodness.’

‘Have you as soon as look at you, Troy would,’ said Denzil, adding, not without a certain pride, ‘Missed me by a hare’s breath last week.’

‘What were you—?’

‘He had our Duane,’ said Collar. ‘And he weren’t doing nothing neither. Just happened to be standing by this chippie on the market square—’

‘Fat Leslie?’

‘Yeah - anyway this fight broke out. Duane climbed in the van to try and calm things down - p’raps make a citizen’s arrest like - when ratarse comes on the scene shopping with his missus. Straight over the counter wasn’t he? Poor old Duane ended up with his face on the hotplate.’

Brian stared, thrilled and aghast in equal measure, wondering how much of it was true.

‘Did he try and make you confess, Bri?’

‘Of course not. I haven’t done anything.’

‘That wouldn’t bother them,’ said Edie. She parted her legs, affording Brian a much clearer and more devastating glimpse of furry tiger markings. She plonked her eighteen-hole Doc Martens firmly on the parquet and rested her hands on her knees. ‘Keep after you. Wear you down.’

‘They were perfectly civil.’

‘Yeah, to you. Tame-o.’

‘Tame-o,’ repeated little Bor shyly.

‘Should see’m round our estate,’ said Denzil. ‘Any excuse, stop and search.’

‘After a feel half the time,’ said Edie and Brian’s heart jerked with excitement. She winked at him, lowering an eyelid the colour of ripe damsons spangled with silver. ‘You gotta go down the station?’

‘I don’t know.’ Brian was sharply aware of his complete ignorance as to the functioning of the humblest traffic unit, let alone the CID. ‘Do they usually say if they want to see you again?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Not usually. They just turn up.’

And, at that very moment, the swing doors parted and Sergeant Troy appeared.

They talked this time, without the aid of refreshments, in a small room leading off the science lab. It was unheated and there was a faint but distinctly unpleasant smell coming from an old-fashioned sink in the far corner. The chill struck Brian keenly in spite of his thick lumberjack shirt, reindeer sweater and string vest.

Troy stood by the window, which was deeply embrasured. He had put his Biro on the stone shelf and was now taking out a notebook in a leisurely manner. He turned to the place he wanted and laid the book down next to the pen. He tugged his belt through the buckle and let his coat hang loose. Then he took off his cap and his hair sprang up, crisp and sparkling like a fox’s brush. Only then did he turn and speak to Brian, who was perched on a laboratory stool behind a bench of instruments and retorts.

‘Sorry to take you out of your rehearsals for the second time, Mr Clapton.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Going well are they?’

‘Oh yes - very.’

‘What play is it you’re putting on again?’

‘Slangwhang For Five Mute Voices.’

Troy nodded and looked deeply interested without responding verbally.

‘A very demanding project. I ask a great deal of them. And of myself too, naturally.’ Brian relaxed a little, unwinding his legs, which had been locked around the struts of the high stool. ‘They’re a great bunch. Especially the Carter twins.’ He had to say her name. Just once. ‘Edie. And Tom. They really are remarkable.’

‘They are indeed, sir,’ replied Troy, who had come across Edie for the first time five years previously. She had been brought into the station when her mother, accompanied by the child, had been caught shoplifting. Edie had been wearing a full-length Teddy Bear coat with every inch of the cunningly pocketed lining stuffed with enough fags and sweeties to open a corner shop. A harmful little armful, to put it mildly.

‘So talented. And with life stacked completely against them. Yet they never give up.’

‘Certainly agree with you on that score, Mr Clapton,’ said Troy. Thinking - stone the crows, this bloke doesn’t know the difference between arsehole time and breakfast time. They must be running bloody rings round him.

‘The girl seems to me especially bright.’ That really must be the last time, Brian told himself. The very last. Not that he’d repeated her name, but still. Best stop while he was safe.

Troy merely smiled, but he had noticed the swoopy Adam’s apple and slightly quickened breath and he caught the sexual drift. Oh yes. Brian fancied a jump there all right. A little flutter. An apple for the teacher. And under age too. Naughty, naughty.

Admitting to recent fatherhood, Troy asked a couple of questions about teaching generally. Brian responded by talking about himself in particular and in great detail and Troy let him run on for a bit. This was the chief’s way when he had something nasty up his sleeve. He called it giving them a bit of margin.

First, isolate your rodent. Let him unwind, become expansive and off guard. Show him the prime Stilton. Have him sniff around a bit. Enjoy a nibble and then—

Brian, now so relaxed he was putting his slippers on, was explaining how he had rejected Cambridge as too elitist choosing instead Teacher Training College in Uttoxeter. His pale eyes shone behind his Schubert glasses. Even his dingy bottle-brush moustache bristled, with satisfaction at this sweet unrolling of his prideful narrative.

Troy, whose mum had always dinned it into him that self-praise was no recommendation, found it as boring as tears.

‘All this is very interesting, Mr Clapton,’ he lied pleasantly, ‘but perhaps now we’d better get down to the matter in hand.’

‘Oh.’ Brian had almost forgotten why they were there. ‘Yes, all right.’

‘Just a small point.’ Troy rustled the pages of his notebook in the pretence of finding a reference. ‘The night of Mr Hadleigh’s death, you told us’ - more rustling, this time at greater length - ‘that you left the house somewhere about ... let’s see ... quarter to eleven. Turning right, you walked once around the Green to, I believe the phrase was “blow the cobwebs away”.’

‘Yes,’ said Brian, though not without a pause.

‘And that is correct?’

‘Indeed it is. My yea is my yea, sergeant, and my nay my nay, as all who know me will confirm.’

‘Well, I’m afraid we have a witness, Mr Clapton, who says they saw you return at just gone midnight. And what’s more approaching your house from the entirely opposite direction.’

The expression on Brian’s face was that of someone suddenly savaged by a dove. He stared at the man who, only seconds ago, had been listening to the story of his life with such courteous interest. Troy smiled. Or at least parted his lips slightly. His sharp teeth gleamed.

‘Ahhh ... really ... ? I don’t know who this person is supposed to be, but perhaps it might be in order to ask them a few questions. Such as what they were doing, hiding in hedges at that hour of the night, spying on people.’

‘Hiding in hedges?’

‘Well, I didn’t see anyone.’

‘That is strange. Because you would certainly have passed him had you, in fact, been coming back from a walk around the Green.’

Silence. Brian, moisture prettily pearling his brow, closed his eyes. Immediately he lost thirty years. Aged three, he picked up a Victoria plum on a neighbour’s lawn and took it home. His parents, greatly alarmed at this early example of their only offspring ‘getting into trouble’, dragged him, crying, next door to apologise and return the booty. After that, forewarned, they laboured ceaselessly to protect Brian from his baser instincts.

He was taught that speaking to strange children or even trying to share his sweets would get him into trouble, as would bringing friends home or going to their houses. Cheeking grown-ups, especially those with even the slightest shred of authority, would, more than any other misdemeanour, bring disaster on them all. Brian cursed their cringing servility from the bottom of his heart. They had eviscerated him. Taken out his guts and left him defenceless.

‘You are aware, sir, that this is a murder investigation?’

‘Oh yes, yes. And anything I can do to help. Anything at all.’

Troy was standing very still, one arm lying across his notebook on the stone window shelf, the other resting at his side. Behind him the sun caught his hair, which glowed, an aureole of fiery quills. There was something concealed behind his blank expression that hinted at great determination. He looked like a rigorously disciplined monk. Or enthusiastic inquisitor.

Brian could, with no trouble at all, see him applying some troublemaker’s face to a hotplate.

‘So. The other night. He may be correct, your witness. Or she of course. If it was a she. I don’t know.’ Hyuf, hyuf.

‘Go on, sir.’ Troy clicked his Biro and smoothed out the paper.

‘Possibly I walked into the village. In fact, now you come to mention it, I remember passing the letter box, so I must have done. Walked into the village that is.’ Pause. ‘I can’t imagine why I said I’d gone round the Green. I can only assume that, as you’d only just that minute told me about Gerald, I was picturing Plover’s Rest and had sort of tangled the two things up in my mind.’

‘Perfectly understandable, Mr Clapton.’

‘Yes, it is. Isn’t it?’ A wisp of colour returned to Brian’s cheeks.

‘See anyone on your walk?’

‘Not a soul. It was a filthy night.’

‘So I understand. I’d’ve wanted a jolly good reason to go out on a night like that, myself.’

‘I did explain—’

‘I would have thought a couple of minutes in the back yard would have been quite long enough to blow a whole lorryload of cobwebs away. Myself.’

Troy wrote for a moment then said, ‘How long would you say you were out, sir? Altogether?’

‘Ohh ... about an hour.’

‘In that weather?’

‘Yes.’

‘For no reason?’

The sergeant lowered his head and the sun hit Brian full in the face. He clambered down from his stool, caught his foot on a low cross strut and stumbled away from the blinding light, dragging the stool with him.

‘You weren’t perhaps,’ continued Troy, ‘on your way to some sort of tryst?’ He was glad of a chance to use this word, which he had picked up from a chocolate commercial on the telly.

‘Tryst?’ The faint blush of colour on Brian’s cheeks deepened and spread like an ugly naevus. A tic doloreux danced beneath his left eye. He croaked, ‘Of course not.’

‘In that case, Mr Clapton, let me put my own theory on the table. I think you left the house intending to turn right - which was how you came to make the slip in your earlier statement - but saw that someone nearby had observed you. So you turned left and walked off, returning later when the coast was clear.’

‘Clear? Clear for what?’

‘For you to re-enter Plover’s Rest of course.’

‘Talk about Jemima Puddleduck,’ said Sergeant Troy, who had recently taken on the sweet pleasures of reading to his daughter. ‘Another five minutes I’d’ve had to mop the floor.’

He was sitting in the incident room rejigging the scene in the science cupboard for Barnaby’s benefit, twirling with satisfaction on a tweedy swivel chair and nicely relaxed after a spaghetti bolognese, double chips, Bakewell tart and custard and several cups of tea in the staff canteen. All this consumed in time unofficially included in the visit to Causton Comprehensive.

‘He admitted he’d gone in the opposite direction from what he’d told us. Gave me some rigmarole about getting confused. Still insists he just went for a walk to clear his mind. I suggested that he had in fact left his house intending to return to Plover’s Rest, seen someone hanging around and been forced to depart elsewhere until they’d gone, whereupon he made his way back there, presumably to get on with the dirty deed.’

‘Did you now?’ said Barnaby, entertaining himself by fleshing out the scene. ‘And how did he react?’

‘Nearly passed out.’

‘You must have enjoyed that, sergeant.’

‘Just doing my job, sir.’

‘Quite. Did you believe him?’

‘I did actually,’ said Troy. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s got the guts to crack a flea let alone do a bloke’s head in. He looked dead guilty but he’s the sort who’d look guilty if a copper asked him for a light.’

‘He took the trouble to lie though, which means he wasn’t simply out for a constitutional.’

‘My bet is he was hanging around Quarry Cottages.’

‘The Carters’ place?’

Troy nodded. ‘Came over all hot and bothered talking about them. And he’s just the sort of pathetic sod to peer through bedroom windows jerking off.’

‘I agree,’ said the chief inspector, for Brian had struck him as a sad case - the sort of man whose personality was out of print before the ink was dry on his birth certificate. ‘He’d be well advised to keep his distance. They’ll have his balls in the shredder.’

‘Got to find them first,’ said Troy, recalling Brian’s limp cords. Hard to believe they held as much as a tin whistle let alone two fun bags and a hot dog.

‘But what really made his day,’ continued the sergeant, chortling happily, ‘was when I said I thought his wife’s paintings were so good I’d decided to commission one. That did for him good and proper.’

‘So now we know of two people at the meeting who went out again that night. St John I feel has been honest with us. Certainly his remorse strikes me as totally genuine. Clapton’s something else. You might well be right about the Carters but I don’t want to leave it there. Give him a breathing space to get nice and comfy then try again. We got his prints yet?’

‘Coming in today on his way home.’ Troy laughed. ‘Couldn’t wait to oblige. Much arrive this end while I was out?’

‘Several things. Ms Levine rang back unable to help us further, which didn’t surprise me. Uxbridge had a call from Hadleigh at ten thirty p.m. the night before the murder reporting his car stolen. It had been parked in Silver Street. No luck tracing it so far. The inquest on Hadleigh is convened for next Tuesday. His GP has agreed to identify the body. And the PM report’s come in. Unfortunately there’s nothing unexpected or revelatory. He was killed, as George Bullard suggested, by a single massive blow to the forehead, probably the first one struck. Whether the murderer knew this and couldn’t stop, or didn’t and thought he was making sure, we can only guess at this stage. Hadleigh had eaten next to nothing but drunk quite a lot of whisky, which bears out what we were told. He was killed between eleven at night and two a.m. and, mingled with the blood and mucous, were found heavy traces of lachrymal fluid.’

‘Come again?’

‘He was crying, sergeant.’

‘What - you mean as he ...’

‘Then or directly before.’

Troy took this in, staring firmly out of the window. He had no brief for men who cried. Men were supposed to die bravely, not weeping and begging for mercy. Wasn’t that what it was all about? Why hadn’t Hadleigh put up a fight? I would, thought Troy. God - I’d murder the fucker. Yet, for some reason, he could not bring himself wholeheartedly to despise the dead man. Always uncomfortable with ambiguity of feeling he shifted awkwardly on his seat.

Like Troy, Barnaby had been touched at reading this detail, so clinically described in two lines of type. Strange as it may seem, more touched than by the incident room’s gallery of hideous photographs now facing him. Unlike Troy he had no trouble accommodating this, or in recognising and accepting the feelings of pity and anger that prompted such a response.

Barnaby was not afraid of emotion and would say, without hesitation, what was in his heart as well as what was in his mind if he thought the occasion warranted it. But, like all policemen, he tried not to get personally involved in an investigation, recognising the need for a clear and disinterested viewpoint. Sometimes (when the victim was a child, for instance) you couldn’t help it. None of them could.

The phone rang and Barnaby saw his sergeant, who had briefly disappeared into some shadowy inner space, become engaged again.

‘DCI Barnaby.’ He listened. ‘Yes, put them on.’

‘Are you the gentleman in charge of poor Mr Hadleigh?’

‘That’s right, sir. I understand you have some information for us. Perhaps I could start by taking your name?’

Troy snatched up a pad and started writing, for the phone was the hands-off variety and the speaker clearly audible.

‘I wasn’t sure whether to bother you because when they came to the door they only wanted to know about the Monday and this was the night before but I talked it over with Elsie, that’s my wife, and she said, “If you don’t go, Harold, you’ll be dwelling and dwelling and end up with one of your heads.” So here I am.’

‘Very good of you, Mr Lilley.’

‘It was quite late, coming up to midnight I’d say, and I was taking Buffy, that’s our collie cross, out for his final trot. Passing Plover’s Rest I saw someone in the front garden.’

‘What - you mean hiding?’

‘No. That bright light he’s got were on and she was standing right close up to the window. Looking in.’

‘She?’

‘That antique woman. Lives down by the Old Dun Cow.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’d know that hair anywhere. She didn’t seem to notice me. After I’d walked by I turned and had another look. It was her all right.’

Barnaby waited, but Mr Lilley seemed to have had his say. The chief inspector thanked him and hung up.

‘You’re not surprised, chief,’ said Troy.

‘I can’t say I am entirely. It was obvious from her reaction yesterday that she’s passionately involved with him on some level or other.’

‘Ah,’ said Troy, tapping his nose with his finger, ‘but was he involved with her?’

‘The general opinion seems to be not. And unrequited love ...’

‘Can turn extremely nasty.’

‘If, as looks to be the case, she was spying on him, was it simply because he was the object of her adoration? Or was she hoping to catch him out?’

‘Maybe she’s already caught him out. There was that crack about the grieving widower.’

‘Do you remember what St John said?’ Troy frowned. ‘That, on the night of the murder, there was someone in the trees behind the garden watching him.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘If that was not imaginative fright but a true perception it opens matters up somewhat.’

‘You mean, it could have been Laura Hutton?’

‘Indeed. And if so, did she wait there till Jennings left? And then approach the cottage?’

‘And if she didn’t she might perhaps have seen who did.’

‘Just so.’ Barnaby heaved himself up and made his way towards the curly-pegged hat stand. ‘We’ll talk to her again this afternoon.’

‘Shall I ring first?’

‘I think not. Well, I’m for lunch. Coming?’

‘No, that’s all right.’ Troy straightened his shoulders in a self-sacrificing sort of way. ‘I’ll stay here. See what comes in.’

The chief inspector, buttoning his black and white herringbone, stared disbelieving at his bag carrier. ‘You’ve been skiving off down there already, haven’t you?’

‘Me?’ Troy stared back, the picture of puzzlement.

‘Yes, you. You bloody gannet.’ He pulled on his gloves. ‘I shall ask them.’

He would too. The mean old devil. ‘Just a quick sarnie.’

Barnaby closed the door behind him, saying, ‘And the rest.’

Laura bent her head forward and blew her nose gently. Her sinuses were raw and her throat ached. Give or take the briefest of intervals she felt she had been weeping for days. First in anguish at Gerald’s perfidy then with grief at his demise. And whoever said tears were healing was talking through their hat. She felt worse now than when she’d started.

She swung her legs to the side of the bed and stood up, stroking smooth the bright woollen Aztec cover. All her bones ached as if they had been broken by a hammer and clumsily reassembled. The knowledge that she would not see him again flared anew.

Never again. Not buying oranges in the village shop. Or stumbling through his instantly forgettable stories. Or smiling as he crossed her path, murmuring a greeting, tilting his grey trilby with the peacock feather. She said the words aloud, ‘Never, ever again’ and felt the flesh on her face shrink as if in anticipation of a wound.

The doorbell. Laura cursed, remembering that she had left her car outside. She had actually driven to Causton that morning, stupidly thinking she would be able to do some work, if it meant only getting off a few catalogues. She had been home within the hour, back in bed with a sleeping tablet. Pilled days now as well as nights. Another imperious ring.

Laura crossed to the window. Although it was almost dusk she could still make out a strange blue car parked between the gate posts of the drive. She dragged herself downstairs, put the chain on the door and opened it.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Hutton.’

‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘I wonder if I might take up a little more of your time? Something’s come up which I think you might be able to clarify for us.’

‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

Barnaby entered first, looking round him. The cottage was exquisite, like a jewel box. All the doors, skirting boards and banisters gleamed with thick, white paint. Deep-piled carpets covered the floors and stairs. She showed them into a tiny sitting room with rich yellow silk-covered walls and switched on a lamp in the form of a Chinese dragon with a coolie shade.

Invited to sit, Barnaby lowered himself with immense care on to a Regency cane sofa. Beside him was a papiermâché card table inlaid with mother-of-pearl on which were a swansdown waistcoat under a glass dome and a jasper chess set. Troy sat on what looked to him like a section of some old choir stalls and marvelled that he should ever see the day.

Laura asked if they would care for a drink then, the offer being refused, poured herself half a tumbler from a Georgian decanter. The warm, peaty smell of excellent whisky pervaded the room. She started to drink it immediately. No casual sipping here. Or pretence that she was indulging merely to be sociable.

Barnaby was reminded of Mrs Jennings. Expensive cut-glass misery was apparently fashionable everywhere. Not that the present situation was without its satisfactions, for nothing loosened the tongue like a drop of the hard stuff and she was already pouring a second.

‘I can’t imagine how I can help you any further, chief inspector.’ She had put her tumbler down on the marble mantelpiece and picked up an enamelled vinaigrette which she handled nervously, fiddling with the stopper and the fine-linked chain. ‘I told you what little I knew yesterday.’

‘Not quite, perhaps.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sounded aggressive, which was bad news so early in the interview. What he was after was alcoholic reminiscence and careless recollection, not boozy defiance.

‘Please don’t misunderstand me, Mrs Hutton. I’m not at all suggesting that you’ve concealed anything that has a bearing on the case. What I’d like to ask you about, if I may, is your connection with Gerald Hadleigh.’

‘There was no connection! I told you yesterday. We only met at the writers’ group. How many more times.’ She seized the glass again and the golden liquid slopped and trembled.

‘Perhaps I should have said,’ Barnaby’s voice was softly apologetic, ‘your feelings for Mr Hadleigh.’

A pause. She looked everywhere but at him. Her glances, swift as the flight of birds, darted to every corner of the room, glanced off the ceiling.

‘You were seen, Mrs Hutton,’ said Troy. ‘Late at night, loitering in his garden.’

He caught the almost imperceptible shake of his superior’s head a second too late and retreated into a cross silence. He was always doing that, the chief. Did it yesterday with that cleaning woman in the kitchen. It was a bit much. Any distressed females to be interviewed and Troy was judged surplus to requirements. He found it deeply offensive. As if he had no compassion. As if delicacy and sensitivity had somehow been missed out of his make-up. Hit the spot with this one all right though. She was looking as if someone had clouted her round the chops with a brick.

‘Oh, God.’ Laura’s expression, by no means calmly ordered in the first place, became even more disturbed. ‘It’ll be all around the bloody village. At least Honoria never gossips.’

‘Miss Lyddiard is aware—?’

‘She barged in here the day of the murder. Quite disgusted to find me in my dressing gown at eleven a.m. Not to mention bawling my head off. Who is this other person ... ?’

‘Someone walking their dog. We didn’t get a name,’ he lied.

‘So you follow up anonymous rumours? Charming.’ But the hostility had gone from her. She looked tired, slightly bewildered and in dire need of further recourse to the grain.

‘It was the night before Mr Hadleigh died, Mrs Hutton. Quite late.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Barnaby stretched his legs out over the smoke-blue carpet. Another couple of feet and his boots would be touching the opposite wall. He waited and felt like Alice, growing.

‘I’m divorced, you know.’ She sounded defensive, as if he had accused her of old-maid deprivation. ‘Got married, stayed married, got unmarried. All with no more discomfort than a mild toothache. I didn’t know what love was until I saw Gerald. I curse the day I came to live here.’

She poured slightly less this time. Barnaby, concerned, sympathetic, kept his glance fixed on her face. He could see she wanted to talk and suspected that, once started, there’d be no stopping her, but she was not yet irrevocably set upon that path. He caught her eye and smiled encouragingly but she seemed to have forgotten he was there. All to the good.

‘I fell totally and absolutely. At first sight, like a teenager. I thought of nothing else. Saw his face everywhere. Lay on my bed and dreamt about him. Wrote long mad letters which I burned. He said once, casually, that he liked yellow. I went out and bought masses of yellow clothes that I look hideous in. I even had this room done in case he ever came to the house. When I discovered he was a widower I was so happy. I could see he was reserved but I thought I could easily overcome that. I’m not used to failure in these matters.’

Barnaby could believe that. Even now, wretchedly miserable and unmade-up, the face beneath the tousled mass of burnished hair was very attractive.

‘I wangled an invitation for a meal, à deux as I thought, at his house. Went along, all dressed up like the dog’s dinner. Half the street was there.’ She laughed, an ugly, tearing sound. ‘Even then I didn’t give up. Told myself that on that first occasion he had needed people round him. That he was shy. So, a few weeks later, I tried again. He’d mentioned once that he was fond of Victorian paintings. I had a small oil in the shop - a rather sentimental fireside scene, late 19th century. I wrapped it up and took it round one afternoon. Tea time.

‘I knew, as soon as he opened the door, that I’d made a mistake. He showed me into the kitchen, looked at the picture and admired it but said he didn’t really have the wall space. We staggered through a bit of quite artificial conversation, then someone came to the door. It was Honoria, wanting some smilax for the church. Gerald was so relieved at the interruption. If it hadn’t been so painful it would have been funny. He went off with her into the garden and started snipping at green stuff. They seemed to be good for a few minutes.

‘I didn’t plan to run upstairs, yet suddenly I was there. I suppose I must have seen it as a chance to find out more about him. Where he slept, what sort of soap he used - stupid things like that. I remember I took his pyjamas from under the pillow and held them against my face. Opened the wardrobe, ran my hands over his clothes. All the while going back and forth to the window checking they were still busy outside. In a chest of drawers I found a shoe box full of photographs. I lifted them up and took one. From the bottom, thinking he’d be less likely to notice. As I was putting it down my bra I heard their voices coming closer to the house. I ran downstairs, bundled up my painting, called goodbye through the kitchen door and left.’ She paused, rolling her glass between the palms of her hands, swilling the liquid.

‘I gave up then. Not loving him - would that I could! But trying to force any sort of intimacy. I was afraid if I pushed things too far he might leave the group and then I’d never see him at all. So that’s how things were for months, then, gradually, human nature being what it is I suppose, hope returned. I knew about Grace of course, how happy they’d been, but nobody can mourn forever. And I was greatly consoled and comforted by the fact that, if he didn’t want me, at least he didn’t appear to want anyone else. Or so I thought.’

The ensuing silence went on for a long time, yet Barnaby was loath to break it. She had withdrawn totally and was staring into the speckled but extremely grand Venetian mirror over the fireplace, frowningly perturbed, as if the person looking back at her was a stranger. He hoped all these painful recollections had not brought some immovable portcullis clanging down in her mind leaving her beyond the reach of his questions and immune to all persuasion. He was on the point of interrogatively reprising her final remark when she started to speak again.

‘I’d started haunting the house. It was a compulsion. A drug, I’d go there after dark hoping to catch sight of him through the window. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone saw me, but I couldn’t stop. I felt there must be another side to him - no one could be that starchy and formal all the time. I thought if I could discover what it was it would help me reach him. Well, I got more than I bargained for.’ The nearness of revelation stretched her flat, colourless voice taut as a drumskin.

‘I was looking into the kitchen, loathing myself for the awful indignity of it, as I always did, when I heard a car draw up at the front of the house. I ran into the trees at the side of the house and saw a woman getting out of a taxi. She paid off the cab then knocked at the door. It opened and she went inside. I was devastated. I saw her through the sitting-room curtains. Very elegant, black suit, long fair hair. He’d given her some wine and she was lifting her glass to him, lifting it ...’

Laura swung her own glass high and whisky flew about, splashing the looking glass. Some droplets fell on her face. She stared around the room. Her eyes were vague and dull with rings beneath them the colour of fresh bruises. Seeing that she was on the point of passing out, Barnaby got up quickly and took her arm.

‘Come and sit down, Mrs Hutton.’ He had to put his arm around her once she had released the mantelpiece. She was a dead weight. He guided her to a low nursing chair. ‘Would you like us to make you some coffee?’

‘... coffee ...’

Barnaby nodded at his sergeant and Troy went off reluctantly to find the kitchen. Once there he searched for a jar of instant in vain but did discover a box of Sainsbury’s individual filters. This was a relief, for he did not relish messing about with some complicated and no doubt expensive equipment, with perhaps disastrous results.

Common or garden mugs seemed to be at a premium, but there were some cups hanging from the shelves of the dresser. Troy took them down with great care. The handles were shaped like harps and there were apricots and walnuts and pale green, delicately veined leaves painted on the bottom. The cups were translucent and shallow, more like dishes really. Troy held one up to the light, squinting appreciatively before putting it tenderly down on the matching saucer and filling the kettle.

Even before the coffee came Laura Hutton was recovering. Barnaby watched her in the glow of the lamp dredging up the energy to reassemble her wits and gather her diffused attention. He could see she already regretted her rash revelations. The baring of her romantic soul. People always did. When he put another question (Did she see the visitor leave?) she replied, tartly, ‘What do you think? I couldn’t get home fast enough.’

‘And did you go out again, Mrs Hutton?’

‘Absolutely not.’

He let things ride for a few minutes after that, sitting silently, looking around the room at the books and ornaments. It was all so perfect, like an expertly assembled set for a period drama. Only the clothes were wrong. She should have been in high button boots and leg-of-mutton braided sleeves, he in a celluloid wing collar with a curly brimmed bowler balanced on his knee. She was talking again.

‘I cheered myself up briefly by deciding she was a pro. An escort, as I believe they now call themselves. Or is it masseuse? I mean - turning up in a taxi at that hour.’

‘More than likely, Mrs Hutton.’

‘Oh - do you think so?’ The note of dull fatalism had vanished. She sounded hopeful, even excited. As if it could possibly matter now. ‘Actually, I know this’ll sound unlikely - but she seemed to remind me of someone.’

‘Oh?’ Barnaby looked up sharply. ‘Who was that?’

‘I couldn’t think at first. The feeling was so certain but though I went over and over it in my mind the answer escaped me. I ran back to the house - obviously sleep was out of the question - and was sitting in here bawling my head off when it came to me. And it wasn’t a person at all.’ She smiled for the first time and pointed over Barnaby’s left shoulder. ‘It was that.’

He got up and turned round. Hanging behind him on the wall was a painting - a large portrait, ornately framed, of a boy who appeared, from the elaborate richness of his apparel, to be a fifteenth-century princeling. A heavy velvet cloak of russet and silver was folded over one slim shoulder and secured with some sort of papal decoration. His slashed doublet was thickly embroidered with pearls and golden thread. There were pearl drops in his ears too, and he wore a russet velvet cap which had a speckled feather curving across his cheek.

Beside him was a table holding an astrolabe and an exquisitely painted mask on a stick. In the background was a dark landscape of wooded hills cleanly divided by a silken waterfall. An angel, bright-winged, posed rather stiffly in the air and looked sternly down in the rather directorial way that angels have. A ray of grace beamed from its hand. The whole scene was bathed in a soft, feathery light. In the bottom right-hand corner were the initials ‘H.C.’.

‘I bought it twelve years ago in Dublin,’ said Laura. ‘A sale of country house furniture. Cost me all I had, but I told myself I’d eventually make a profit, or at least get my money back. In the event I could never bring myself to part with him.’

She had moved to stand beside Barnaby during this speech and reached out now, laying the tips of her fingers on the heavily beringed hand of the boy. The whole painting was crazed and spidery cracks ran over the ivory skin.

‘Doesn’t he look sad?’

‘Terribly sad, yes.’

The boy carried the weight of his heavy robes with sweet dignity but the wide-apart green eyes were dreamily mournful and the lovely curve of his mouth inclined more to sorrow than to joy. Barnaby had the sudden, deeply fanciful notion that his pallor could have come from recent tears.

‘How old do you think he is?’ asked Laura.

‘I would have said fifteen or so, except for these.’ He pointed to the delicate, well-shaped hands. ‘They belong to a young man.’

‘Yes. I wonder about him and because I’ll never know I make things up. That his parents are insisting on a dynastic marriage with someone he hates. That he reigns over a kingdom struck down by plague. That the court necromancer has him in thrall. Whatever the reason, I feel sure his heart is breaking.’

And that, thought the chief inspector, as his ears picked up the sound of a delicate crash, as of many falling china fragments, is not all. Mrs Hutton appeared not to have noticed. Moments later Troy eased open the door with his foot and came in with a tray.

The coffee was delicious, though lukewarm as the filters would not fit the dish-like cups and Troy had had to hold them over the cups one at a time while the stuff dripped through. He gave Mrs Hutton the freshest.

As they sat sipping Barnaby sought to bring the conversation back to that summer afternoon when she had called on Hadleigh and stolen (although of course he did not describe it so) his likeness. But she got more upset and started shouting that she had had enough.

‘Please I’m almost through—’

‘You’re almost through?’

‘Surely you want to help us discover—’

‘How can you ask me that? Me of all people.’ Her face was white with outrage. She threw back the heavy mane of tangled hair and glared at him, then made as if to rise, appeared overcome by giddiness and fell back into her seat.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Hutton?’

‘I’ve taken a pill. You woke me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Are you allowed to do this? Just turn up at someone’s house and ... browbeat them?’

‘I’ve no wish at all to distress you—’

‘Then go away. That’s the simple bloody answer to that. Just go away.’

Laura covered her face with her hands. Although there were three people, one of them extremely large, in the tiny room she appeared physically isolated, as if her misery had thrown up an invisible barrier.

Barnaby, in a quiet explanatory tone, said, ‘The point is that you, more than anyone else, are in a unique position to be able to assist us.’

‘Oh?’ She looked at him with grudging interest. ‘In what way?’

‘The chest of drawers where you found the photograph was always kept locked. Whoever killed him took everything that was in it away. Obviously to discover someone who has actually seen what was inside—’

‘But I didn’t. I’d only just opened the drawer when I heard them coming back. I grabbed the picture and ran.’

‘Wasn’t there anything else in there apart from the shoe box?’

‘Some plastic boxes with fitted lids. The sort you keep salad in. Or left-over food.’

‘Did you notice any of the other photographs? The one on top, for instance?’

‘No.’

‘Could I see the one you do have?’

‘I burned it the morning after I saw his ... girlfriend. Threw it in the Raeburn with a basket of soggy tissues. I regret it now, of course.’ Slowly she put the coffee down and her face in the shadows was distraught. ‘Dreadfully. It was all I had of him.’

‘It would assist us if you could describe it.’

‘I can’t possibly imagine how.’

‘We’re trying to discover all we can about Mr Hadleigh. The smallest details help.’

‘It was just a holiday snap, in a restaurant or night club. There were three or four men dancing in a line, the Greek way. A woman was there as well but I cut her off.’

‘Was it the person in the wedding photograph?’

‘No. He was younger in the picture ... laughing ... happy. I wish I’d known him then.’

Although the words were clear enough her expression was becoming muddled and confused and she swayed on the edge of her seat with exhaustion, plainly at the end of her tether. Barnaby nodded to his sergeant and they both got up to leave. Laura made no attempt to see them out.

As he was being driven back to the station Barnaby re-ran the scene over and over in his mind. He recalled her tears and had no doubt that they were genuine. But tears could mean pain and anger as well as grief. Or even that most wasteful and bitter of emotions, remorse.

He wondered again if Laura Hutton, after the discovery that she was not only a woman scorned but a woman scorned in favour of another, had returned to Plover’s Rest after the writers’ meeting, confronted Gerald Hadleigh with his perfidy and struck him full in the face with the nearest means to hand?

That love could turn to hatred was hardly news to any policeman, for the majority of murders they were called upon to investigate were simple domestics. And crimes of passion, in the heat of occurrence, were simple, pared down to the emotional bone. It was only afterwards, in wretched recollection and, sometimes, regret, that even the most crude analysis could begin to take place.

So far she was the only person in his sights with a definite motive, for Jennings, circumstantially leading the field, was still an unknown quantity. And for that reason alone suspicion of her involvement could not be put aside.

Back in the incident room Barnaby immediately asked for a trace on the driver who had taken Hadleigh’s visitor to Plover’s Rest. She may well have been, as Laura Hutton hopefully suggested, a lady of the night but this did not necessarily mean that Hadleigh had not discussed with her what was on his mind. Lonely, buttoned-up types often found it easier to talk to strangers.

‘At least now we know,’ Troy was tapping at a keyboard, bringing up the report of the stolen Celica, ‘why she had to take a cab.’

‘He may not have given her a lift even if he had the car.’

‘Yeah. Him being so ultra-ultra.’ Troy absorbed details slowly and carefully then said, with a wink in his voice, ‘Maybe he picked her up at that new club. It’s not far from where he seems to have parked.’

‘What new club?’ Barnaby got up to read over his sergeant’s shoulder.

‘Latimer Road. The girls wear long ears and fluffy tails.’

‘Bit old-fashioned.’

‘Called “The Buck Stops Here”.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Straight up.’

‘I’ll bet they are.’ Barnaby laughed, checked the screen again and said, ‘Odd.’

‘What’s that, chief?’

‘He finds the car missing at ten p.m. and phones to report it at ten thirty.’

‘So?’

‘Silver Street, where he left it, is all of two minutes from the station. Why not go straight there? For all he knew it had only that second been nicked. Half an hour could have made all the difference.’

‘Maybe he was walking around looking for it.’

‘No time. Finding a cab, being driven home, which is where’ - Barnaby pointed to the dazzling emerald letters - ‘he said he was calling from, would take all of half an hour.’

Troy frowned and was plainly uncomfortable. Ten years in the force and he was still ill at ease when faced with unpredictable behaviour. Villainy, aggression, out-and-out lies, nil problemo. Routine. But when people did not do the obviously sensible thing that any given set of circumstances logically dictated they should then the sergeant found himself on shifting sands. And he didn’t like it. Pondering at some length on the general cussedness of human nature he came round to find the chief focusing strongly in his direction.

‘You have the gift of hearing, sergeant?’

‘Far as I know, sir.’

‘Milk and no sugar.’

‘Right.’ Troy turned smoothly on his heel. ‘Then is it all right if I take five?’

‘I thought you just did.’

Barnaby turned his attention to the messages and print-outs on his desk. Like many older officers he missed the circular card indexes and regular flow of action forms through his hands. But new tricks had to be learned and there was no denying the tremendous speed and efficiency of computers. Information that might once have taken days to obtain could now be displayed on a screen in as many minutes. Only a fool would wish the clock turned back.

Thoughts about Jennings, always on a quiet, subterranean bubble, surfaced. He hoped it was not too long before the missing fish was in their net. Barnaby hoped to avoid if possible a police-would-like-to-interview press release. And not only because any advantage of surprise would then be lost. A hell of a lot of time would also be wasted sifting the odd grain of possible fact from the outpourings of genuine nutters, self-aggrandising morons and fraudsters who liked nothing better than sending police cars, ambulances or fire engines on pointless errands of mercy.

He rustled through more flimsies. The results of the previous evening’s house to house were, as expected, of little positive use. Few people had been out and about on that filthy February night. Dun Cow habitués had either walked or driven quickly home. And the net-curtain brigade, those invaluable peepers at life’s rich pageant, seemed all to have drawn the blinds and gone to bed. Perhaps more helpful facts might be discovered today, when officers had a wider brief.

They were now moving into the evening of the second day. Still close to the beginning of the case. The time when the scene, if properly protected and assessed, was at its most fertile, most willing to yield up its secrets. Unfortunately this was also usually the time when the information needed to make sense of these secrets was simply not available.

Barnaby walked over to one of the three television sets concealed behind a plywood partition, rewound the scenes-of-crime video and pressed ‘play’. Troy turned up with the coffee just as a slow zoom brought the battered cranium of Gerald Hadleigh into focus.

‘He just didn’t know when to stop, did he?’

‘He certainly didn’t,’ said the chief inspector, taking the beaker and swallowing with some relish, for the days were long gone when such sights could put him off his victuals. ‘And I must say it makes me uneasy.’

‘How’s that, sir?’

‘Beating someone to this degree argues great calculation or great rage.’

‘I’d go for the second myself.’

‘Why?’

‘Um ... not sure.’

Troy knew that this would not be considered an acceptable response and he was right. To say, truthfully, that he spoke from a gut feeling would also not be acceptable. Not that the chief didn’t have gut feelings but, in his case, they were called perceptions and treated with cautious respect. When Troy had perceptions he was told he was being sloppy-minded and to think things through. So now he thought, quite hard, eventually coming up with:

‘I suppose the only reason I can think of for a calculated battering is to conceal identity. And we know that wasn’t the case here.’

‘But, assuming pro tem it’s Jennings we’re after, he didn’t appear angry when St John saw him through the kitchen window.’

‘Rows can blow up in seconds. Had one this morning on my way out.’ Troy’s eyes narrowed at the recollection. ‘Halfway through the door when she started—’

‘Let’s stick to the point. I get the feeling,’ continued Barnaby, ‘that Hadleigh wasn’t so much physically as emotionally afraid of this man. That he dreaded, perhaps, being compelled to relive painful memories.’

Troy would have loved to ask on what his superior officer based this ‘feeling’ and if it might not perhaps be a good idea if he thought the matter logically through. And wondered if the day would ever come when he would be brave enough to put this observation into words. Dream on, Gavin. He said:

‘So what if such a thing actually came about, chief. Jennings putting Hadleigh through it - taunting him about the old days and that - Hadleigh becomes enraged, picks up the candlestick and goes for him. Jennings turns the tables in self-defence.’

‘Which makes the murder unpremeditated.’

‘Right.’

‘So where does Jennings’ clearly preplanned escape scheme come in? And where was this taunting supposed to be going on?’

‘Could have been anywhere.’

‘Hadleigh was killed upstairs.’

‘But if they were arguing and one stormed off the other would follow. Rows go from room to room. Or say Hadleigh went up to get his keys to lock up once Jennings had left when the bloke happened to be using the bathroom.’

‘Won’t work. Hadleigh was undressed.’

‘OK. So maybe this “past” involved a touch of the other.’ Here Troy dropped his wrist in an insultingly coy gesture. ‘And they were going to have a final bash for old times’ sake.’

‘And what evidence do you base that notion on?’ Barnaby watched Troy’s jaw tighten in mulish resentment as he stared sullenly at his gleaming boots. ‘I’m not trying to catch you out, sergeant.’

‘No, sir.’ Not much.

‘But it’s important not to come to over-quick decisions. Also to hold any theories lightly. Especially one that you’ve set your heart on.’

Troy did not reply, but the curve of his mouth hardened.

‘You must learn to argue against yourself. If you’re right it can only make your case stronger. If you’re wrong it can stop you looking foolish later on.’

‘Yes.’ Troy looked up and his expression lightened. ‘I know that really, but with Jennings ... You must admit it does look completely open and shut.’

‘And the chances are it is,’ replied the chief inspector. ‘But I’m always wary of anything handed to me on a plate. What do we keep, sergeant?’

‘Our options open.’ Troy tried to look respectful and only succeeded in looking desperate for a fag.

‘The outdoor lot all back?’

‘Bar Flash Harry and partner. And they’re on their way.’

‘Inspector Meredith to you, sergeant.’

‘I’ll try to remember,’ said Troy, grinning. ‘Sir.’

‘Debriefing in half an hour then.’

Rex sat in front of his bureau looking down into the open space where his iron rations had been. Crisps, biscuits (sweet and savoury), chocolate, boiled sweets, pickled onions - he had devoured them all. Well, Montcalm had helped.

There were three tubes of Smarties left. Rex prised out the little white plastic disc with a yellow, horny nail. The dog’s drooling jaws gaped wide. Rex poured the sweets in. The jaws closed. A single incisive mashing was followed by a noisy swallow and they were open again. It really was extraordinary. Like standing by a factory bench feeding a machine. Open, crunch, gulp, close. Open, crunch, gulp, close. Open ...

Rex, his spherical frizz of hair now drooping sadly, picked up a second tube then stood distractedly staring at the closed curtains. The truth was he did not know what to do with himself. He had no heart for the downfall of Byzantium. Or for map reading. Nor making out mock orders for bully beef and hard tack on his faded pink pad of quartermaster’s forms before polishing his medals. Even his Dictionary of Weapons and Military Terms for the first time ever failed to enthral. For Rex was gripped by the most devastating remorse.

If only, he moaned silently, I had hammered on the front door the moment it was closed, and kept hammering. Or gone round to the kitchen and got in that way. Anything would have been better than running away like a frightened rabbit. Ten-year-old drummer boys under fire had shown more courage. Rex recalled with shame the feelings of embarrassment that had kept him from persisting. For the sake of mere self-consciousness a man had died.

And if only, once back in Borodino, he had talked to someone. Anyone. For Gerald would surely have understood that it was only concern for his well-being that had forced Rex to break his promise. Or he could have rung Gerald up himself from the box. And why, when he finally did return, had he not taken Montcalm? Instructed, the dog would have barked and thundered and skittered his claws till someone had responded. He would not have slunk away, at the first little set-back, to the safety of his own bunker.

But the hardest question of all, the sharpest lance, was why he (Rex) had been so quickly seduced into complacency by the sight of a relaxed Max smiling, sipping a drink and chatting, with apparent amiability, to Gerald.

Oh! that word ‘apparently’. For, with hindsight, it seemed to Rex that Max could well have sensed that he was being observed and was merely faking benevolence. Maybe by that time poor Gerald was already disabled in some way, lying wounded, or gagged and bound, just beyond Rex’s line of vision, praying that someone would break in and save him from the coup de grâce.

Last night Rex had had a dreadful dream. He had been staring through the kitchen window at Plover’s Rest, obsessed with a fearful knowledge that something terrible was about to happen. Inside, Gerald was making a sandwich. He had lain down a slice of white bread the size of a dinner plate then taken down his mortar and pestle and emptied into it a large brown bottle of tablets that Rex understood to be lethal. Grinding them slowly into powder he had then shaken this on the bread and folded it over. Pacing up and down the room, he started to eat very fast, pushing the sandwich at his mouth, knuckling in the edges. Rex pounded on the window but the glass simply gave way under his hand then sprang back, smoothly undented, making no sound. Gradually, as Gerald ate, his skin became all red and shiny, like wet paint.

Rex shivered. He was very cold. It was bedtime but he had forgotten to fill his hot-water bottle or switch on the tiny electric fire in his bedroom. He felt Montcalm’s head, the beard still damp with salivary gratitude, nudging his knee.

He unplugged the last two tubes of Smarties and shared them out, thinking what a relief it would have been to have spoken all these bitterly regretful musings aloud. But you could not burden a simple canine mind with such concerns. Montcalm would just have become depressed both over the sad facts of the case and his inability to be of any solid, practical use.

There was another reason too. (Here Rex got slowly and stiffly to his feet.) The heart of the matter was that he could not bear the dog to discover he had a master of whom he should be ashamed.

Amy was sitting beside a grate holding nothing for her comfort but a dusty, accordion-pleated, crimson parchment fan. Honoria, sitting upright as if bolted into position, was behind her desk studying a page of four heraldic plates by the light of an ancient cream Anglepoise. The book had been in the parcel from the London Library. Membership was expensive but, because of the importance of the work, not regarded as an extravagance, unlike Amy’s Biro and copying paper. This last cost two pound sixty-five a packet and, such was the amount of time she had to spare, lasted forever.

Honoria also used the reference library in Uxbridge, wearing white cotton gloves bought specifically for that purpose from the pharmaceutical section at Boots. She never took books out for fear of where they’d been. (Marie Corelli’s notion that the working classes should be denied access to such institutions to stop them spreading their filthy germs would have found great favour with Honoria.) Amy’s polluting volumes were kept safely tethered in her room.

‘Look at this,’ Honoria hissed, baring camel-like teeth the colour of old piano keys.

She appeared to be talking to herself but, just to be on the safe side and also for a chance to get near the warm, Amy went and stood behind the carved, throne-like chair. In the centre of the page, which Honoria had just spanked severely, was a very faint brown ring.

‘Would you believe it?’ she now cried.

‘Yes I would,’ replied Amy. ‘I took out an Iris Murdoch once and someone had inked commas in between all her adjectives.’

‘You expect no more from the users of public libraries.’ She was wrong; there was quite a lot more. The counter assistant had told Amy of a book returned with a fried egg used as a marker. When remonstrated with, the subscriber had said she’d been brought up never to turn the pages down.

‘What are you standing there for?’

Amy returned to her seat, where she also was doing research. Behind the protective shield of Art and Architecture: English Country Houses in the Eighteenth Century was concealed Penny Vincenzi’s Old Sins. Amy was analysing as she went along, seeing when hares were started and how various plot lines finally meshed, noting how the dialogue both carried the story and revealed character.

As it was a tenpenny bargain from the church jumble she was able to make notes discreetly in the margin. Of course she would rather be working on her own book. Amy had been astonished when Max Jennings, asked for a definition of writing, had said, ‘Looking for something else to do.’ She could never wait to get back to Rompers.

The problem was, although it had never been said in so many words, that her time was not really her own until she retired. And Amy could not retire before bedtime drinks were made. She could sit all evening with - or rather in the same room as - Honoria, or potter about in the freezing kitchen, with never a demand being made. But should she disappear upstairs, within minutes there would be a call for a fact to be verified, a pencil to be sharpened or perhaps merely a cup of Ridgeway’s Orange Pekoe to be infused.

Amy peered over the edge of her pages at the formidable bulk of her sister-in-law, noting the massive shoulders and unyielding cliff of a bosom. Impossible to imagine Ralph’s downy infant head resting comfortably there. Yet rest it must have done. There was an oval photograph of them both on the washstand in Honoria’s room. She was wearing a brightly patterned dress over a froth of petticoats and shoes with little Louis heels. She had been a big girl even then, with beefy shoulders and a strong jaw. But she looked so happy, holding the baby high in the air, arms straight, head thrown back and laughing with joy into his face.

Amy looked at the picture often. Knowing that Honoria had loved and cared for Ralph every day of his young life made the miseries of Gresham House a bit easier to bear. And this devotion had been a sacrifice in more ways than one. Ralph had told Amy that his sister had been on the point of getting engaged, to a farmer from Hertford, when their parents were killed. He had refused to accept the child and severed the relationship. Amy sometimes wondered if this story was true and not only because the idea of anyone being romantically interested in Honoria seemed so totally preposterous. Amy would not put it past her to make something like this up in an attempt to bind Ralph with chains of guilt.

Yet surely Honoria had not believed her brother would never marry, that she could somehow ‘mother’ him to the end of his days? How against nature this would be. Amy imagined Ralph, handsome, light of heart, slowly transformed into a sad middle-aged bachelor looking after a crabby old woman seventeen years his senior. But perhaps, if he had stayed at home, she would not have become crabby.

Amy had really looked forward to meeting her beloved’s only relative. She had imagined many visits of quiet happiness when they would go through family albums together while Honoria filled in the background, repeating old jokes and Ralph’s infant malapropisms - scenes such as Ralph enjoyed when he visited Amy’s parents. But the reality had been quite different. Honoria had greedily taken over Amy’s husband the minute they arrived, sucking him into ‘do you remember’ conversations with an insatiable and, it seemed to Amy, rather unhealthy relish. She had been reminded of those doting parents who say of their infant ‘Couldn’t you just eat him?’

She saw why Ralph had to get away. And stay away if he was to survive and grow. Before she had got to know Honoria Amy had urged Ralph to see more of his sister. Write more frequently. But sometimes, when they came to England, Ralph would not even let Honoria know they were in the country. Amy had never told her sister-in-law this. She had an unwillingness to inflict pain that Honoria said was the sure sign of a weakling.

The springs of the grandmother clock, coughing softly, recalled Amy to an unhappy present. It was ten o’clock, time for the news.

Honoria got up clumsily, jarring the chair back and almost overturning the lamp and switched on something that could only be called a wireless. A maple bird’s-eye cabinet with bakelite knobs, fawn silk fretted panels and valves that had to be let warm up. Honoria always stared at it fiercely when it was animate as if listening alone would not give full value. Amy closed Old Sins, slipped the book under her jumper and went to make the cocoa.

She measured two cups of liquid and put the pan on. It had to be half and half for there were only two pints of milk a day and she had made some queen cakes that morning. Honoria was so mean. Yesterday, after Amy had scraped the very last smear of Marmite from the jar to make lunch-time sandwiches, Honoria had filled it with hot water, swilled it round and put the residue aside for gravy.

Ralph had said it was because she remembered the war, but Amy didn’t believe that for a minute. Her own mother had lived through the same period and had been the most profligate of women, hurling butter and cream into her cooking, leaving soap to dissolve in the bath and tossing left-overs straight into the bin.

At Gresham House even a single uneaten sprout would be placed in the cavernous Electrolux and covered with a saucer, to be usefully incorporated in some future repast. It would turn up, sometimes days later, squatting next to a Welsh rarebit like a soft little green boulder or bulking out a pilchard omelette.

Amy snatched at the pan just in time and made the drinks. She was tempted to a queen cake, but Honoria might have counted them, as she had the Butter Osbornes last week.

Amy’s fingers strayed to the locket with Ralph’s picture that always hung around her neck. She wished with hopeless, helpless longing that he was beside her. Then all the penny-pinching would have been merely a lark and the rambling, stone-cold barn of a house filled with warmth and light and sunshine. But Ralph lay beneath the yew trees in his grave and oh! might Amy have cried, had she been at all familiar with the phrase, the difference to me.

Barnaby once more made his way to the table at the far end of the incident room, taking all its attention with him. Those seated turned aside from their computers, rolling their heads and hunching their shoulders to relieve tension. Footsloggers perched on the ends of desks or leant against the wall, talking amongst themselves and popping cans from the automat. Inspector Meredith, sleek in his Tommy Nutter tweeds and moleskin waistcoat, had found himself a nice-looking chair and positioned it prominently.

Barnaby opened with a brief summary of the post-mortem. He then recapped on his interview with Laura as did Troy on his with Brian Clapton. Then Barnaby spoke again.

‘We had news a short time ago about Hadleigh’s car. No surprises. A straight TDA. Good and wrecked and dumped in the river. We should have the SOCO report on Plover’s Rest first thing in the morning and there’s been a fax from Jennings’ publishers, which I’ve condensed, giving details of his background. Sergeant?’

Troy cleared his throat. ‘Born and brought up in Scotland in the early fifties. State educated. Degree in eng ... um ... ing ...’

‘Eng. Lit. I think you’ll find, sergeant,’ said Meredith.

‘Yeah. Right.’ Troy’s near-transparent skin reddened. ‘From Birmingham. Returned home, got a job on the local newspaper subbing and writing features. Moved to London and wrote copy for various advertising agencies while working on his first novel, Far Away Hills. Following its success became a writer full time. Married to dancer Ava June. One child, died in infancy.’

‘No luck so far,’ Barnaby moved on quickly, seeing that Inspector Meredith was about to chime in, ‘on finding Hadleigh’s marriage certificate, will or even National Insurance number, but we have traced the estate agent who sold him the cottage and hope to have, by tomorrow, the name of the solicitor who did the conveyancing. There’s just a chance he may have handled other business for Hadleigh as well. So ...’ He stared questioningly at his outside team.

Detective Constable Willoughby, still, to everyone’s annoyance, looking as cookie crisp and fresh from the cleaner’s as he had nearly ten footslogging hours ago, spoke up.

‘This blonde Mrs Hutton mentions, sir. Doesn’t tie in at all with what we’ve been picking up—’

‘Yes. Thank you, constable,’ interrupted Inspector Meredith. After a commanding check around the room to see that all were attending, he continued, ‘I’m afraid, in spite of a most comprehensive and pertinent series of interviews, with a wide range of villagers, we’ve had more success finding out what Mr Hadleigh didn’t do than what he did. With the exception of the Writers Circle he joined in no aspect of rural life and this includes going to church. No one can recall friends staying overnight or even day visitors and the house is perfectly placed for these sorts of comings and goings to be observed. His car was serviced regularly by the Cross Keys garage at Charlecote Lucy. He paid promptly by cheque and, though civil, was never forthcoming. He didn’t use the pub but did frequent the village store. Mrs Miggs, the owner, always thought of him as an ex-military man because he sometimes wore a blue blazer with brass buttons.’

Here the humorous condescension in Inspector Meredith’s voice knew no bounds and he gave a little laugh not a million miles removed from Brian’s hyuf, hyuf, at the foibles of the ignorati.

‘Hadleigh always gave at the door, but not over-generously, although he was thought to be comfortably off. He employed a domestic help and did his own gardening. Moved into Plover’s Rest in 1983 and was thought to have been widowed not long before. The village respected his wish for privacy and, as he never did anything to draw attention to himself, seems to have more or less lost interest in him.’

Barnaby absorbed this pompously delivered deposition in impassive silence. If he was disappointed that it told him little he did not know already he gave no sign. But Inspector Meredith had still not finished.

‘During my peregrinations, Tom,’ (Tom! Troy was not alone in his pleasurable anticipation of the chief’s response to this uninvited familiarity) ‘I’ve been giving this matter of Jennings’ and Hadleigh’s previous connection considerable thought.’

‘Have you indeed, Ian,’ said Barnaby. ‘And what conclusions, if any, have you reached?’

‘What if,’ posited the inspector, ‘this past unpleasantness we’ve heard about was not some picayune little squabble but a really serious matter. Let’s say one of them had committed a criminal offence.’

‘And?’

‘And we have an excellent opportunity for blackmail.’ The ‘of course’ was silent but nonetheless perfectly audible.

‘Why wait till now?’

‘Because now Jennings is rich and successful.’

‘He’s been rich and successful for ten years.’

‘What makes you think, inspector,’ interjected Troy, ‘that it was Hadleigh who had the power to carry out blackmail?’

‘He instigated the meeting.’ By now Meredith was visibly constraining his impatience.

‘Under duress.’

‘Oh - I don’t believe that. He could have got out of sending the invitation if he’d really wanted to.’

Here Barnaby made a small rumble of assent, for the words mirrored his own opinions exactly. It had struck him from the beginning that the dead man’s feelings about the meeting must have been much more ambivalent than he had admitted to St John. Or perhaps even to himself. Meredith was off again.

‘Jennings had a hell of a lot to lose—’

‘That depends on the offence,’ said Barnaby. ‘In today’s climate almost anything except the sexual abuse of children, animals and possibly musical instruments can only increase an author’s standing. And, presumably, his sales.’

‘So you think,’ Troy asked Inspector Meredith, ‘that Hadleigh attempted blackmail and Jennings, rather than risk exposure, killed him?’

‘I think it’s possible, sergeant, yes.’

‘Then why,’ continued Troy, wary of triumphalism yet not quite able totally to conceal a victorious lilt to his voice, ‘did he ask St John on no account to leave them alone together?’

‘To deliberately mislead.’ Again the unspoken ‘of course’. ‘It was a red herring.’

‘A what?’ Barnaby’s face showed mirth and incredulity. The room, given permission from the top, fell modestly about. ‘You seem to have come down with a touch of the Agatha’s, Ian. Been watching Poirot, have you? On the telly?

‘Right,’ he continued, ‘if there are no more fanciful or entertaining insights I think we’ll call it a day. Briefing tomorrow nine a.m. unless something unforeseen arises. Before you go, Meredith - a word.’

The room emptied and the night-duty shift moved in. Troy took himself off to the chief’s office to collect his coat, where a few minutes later Barnaby, teeth still bared with satisfaction, joined him. They buttoned up against the weather and set off for the car park. Troy said, ‘I dunno what he’s on about half the time. I thought peregrinations were birds.’

‘Means “walking about”.’

‘Why can’t he say so then?’

‘Ah - that’s the beauty of higher education, sergeant. Never use two simple words when one really complicated one will do.’

‘What’s he got a degree for, anyway?’

‘Earth sciences, I believe.’

‘Oh well,’ said Troy, obscurely comforted, ‘earth sciences.’ He held open the main door and Barnaby passed through. ‘Tell you what, chief.’

‘What?’

‘He’s got a terrible boil at the back of his neck.’

‘Has he?’ Barnaby and his bag carrier exchanged smiles of complicitous pleasure.

‘Goodnight, sir.’

‘Gavin.’

Barnaby paused for a moment at the door of the Orion and gazed up at a sky full of cold, savage stars. The sort of stars you could tell at a glance had got it in for you. By the time he got home to Arbury Crescent it had begun to snow.