Death in Disguise (20 page)

‘One of the people who lives here, sir. Apparently he's a bit mental.'

‘That should cheer things up.' Barnaby crossed over to the dais and crouched by the white robed corpse. Some blood had oozed from the wound in his chest and lay in a long narrow crinkle, glistening like newly set plum jam. ‘What've we got then, George?'

‘As you see,' said Doctor Bullard. ‘A blade artist.'

‘Neat.' Barnaby took a close look then nodded in the direction of the howling which was dying into a series of tormented moans. ‘Can't you give him something? It's enough to drive a man to drink.'

The doctor shook his head. ‘As far as I can gather he's already on quite complicated medication. Not wise to mix it. I've suggested calling their own doctor but they say they haven't got one. Do it all themselves with herbs and moonshine.'

‘They must have. How does he get his stuff?'

‘Hillingdon at Uxbridge by all accounts.' He got up, dusting his knees unnecessarily.

‘On the way to bed was he Doctor Bullard?' asked Troy, winking at the body. ‘In his nightie.'

‘How long, George?'

‘An hour at the most. But this time you don't need me to tell you. Apparently they were all here when it happened.'

‘What…you mean they were playing about? This is some sort of accident?'

Troy recognised a trace of disappointment in his chief's voice. Briefly Barnaby looked betrayed. Smiling to himself, the sergeant looked down at the dead man, noting the refined passionless features and tissuey skin. And get a load of that hair. He looked like something out of the ten commandments. You could just see him as Moses in the wilderness shouting: ‘Let my people go.' Or was it ‘come'? Troy and the Bible were not close. Barnaby was now talking to Graham Arkwright, Scene of Crime. The sergeant tuned in.

‘…a lot to go on, I'm afraid. We found this behind that curtain over there.' He indicated a small embrasure and held up a plastic bag containing a bright yellow glove. ‘Might get something on the knife for you, there's a bit of thread attached. Know anything about this set-up, Tom?' Barnaby shook his head.

‘My wife came here on a weaving course. Took me for ever to get rid of the scarf. I gave it to a jumble sale in the end. Turned up later in the window of Oxfam. She wouldn't speak to me for a week.'

‘I'd call that a result myself,' said Troy.

Barnaby took the glove and a second bag containing the knife and said, ‘I'll drop these off later at Forensic—OK?'

A flash bulb flared and the two officers made their way towards the man standing in the doorway.

‘You first here, Sergeant?'

‘Yes, sir. Arrived same time as the ambulance. On patrol with Policewoman Lynley. Notified the CID and stayed here with the body. She's got the others downstairs. The big room far side of the hall.'

‘How did it strike you—the set-up?'

‘Well…much as you'd expect really. They were all standing round looking gobsmacked. Apart from the idiot boy who was yowling his head off. I did ask if the dead man had been touched and they said no. I couldn't get anything out of them after that.'

‘Right.' Barnaby lumbered back downstairs. Troy, slim as a whip in his worn leather blouson and tight grey pants, running ahead opening two doors before finding the right one.

It was quite large with a ‘feathered' ceiling made of wood, as were the panelled walls, so that one had the impression of being in a large carved box. There were a lot of shell-like polystyrene chairs on thin metal legs and an imperfectly cleaned blackboard. A place for lectures and seminars.

The communalists were all bunched together with the exception of one man who stood some distance away by the French windows. Bunched fists rammed into his pockets, he looked baffled and full of rage. There was a long scratch beaded with fresh blood down his left cheek. Barnaby thought he looked vaguely familiar.

Troy clocked the WPC (never see thirty again and dumpy with it), and then the rest. A weeping girl in a sari being comforted by a man in jeans. The wailing boy, his head in the lap of a bold-featured woman wearing blue. A dolly, dolly blonde and a harsh-faced pepper-and-salter in corduroy pants. Two fat pathetic-looking hippies with lumps of rock in the middle of their foreheads and a woman in a mad frock who looked only marginally more life-like than Stiffy upstairs. Plus a round little geezer with a beard the colour of tomato sauce.

Barnaby introduced himself and asked if any of them could tell him precisely what had happened. There was a long, long pause. Troy got the impression that the girl in the sari was struggling to control her sobs preparatory to speech, but then everyone (bar the man by the window) turned to the woman in blue. Still stroking the head of the crying youth, she gave a reluctant inclination of her head and made to stand but the boy clung so tightly to her knees that movement was impossible. When she spoke her voice was very tight. Low and calm but unnaturally so as if large reservoirs of emotion were being strenuously damned.

‘The Master has left us. He has entered his body of lights and is now at one with the oversoul.'

Oh dear, oh dear, thought the chief inspector. It's going to be one of those. Troy wondered what the chances were of slipping out for a quick drag before things got going seriously. He'd cut down to five a day, had smoked the first four before breakfast, and the need for a long cool inhalation was driving him up the wall. A greatly extended two minutes went by without anyone saying a dicky bird. Then the tart with saggy boobs started yammering whilst opening her arms wide, before flinging them across her chest as if to keep warm.

The sergeant regarded these flamboyant obsequies with irritation and dislike. You'd have thought they were a load of foreigners the way they were cracking on. Italians. Or jabbering Caribbeans. His hand reached into his pocket and closed wistfully over a lighter and packet of Chesterfields.

Barnaby quickly realised that questioning en masse would get him nowhere. All he had ascertained so far was the dead man's name. It was like talking to captured prisoners of war. So he asked for a separate room and they were offered what appeared to be The Lodge's office.

A workmanlike place—boxes of stationery and manila envelopes, filing cabinets, an old fashioned duplicator. On the wall a reincarnation advisory poster:
Ever signed a cheque ‘William Shakespeare' then wondered why?
It was an internal room with no windows which made it especially satisfactory from a policeman's point of view. The combination of an unknown interrogator and the complete disappearance of the outside world could mean you were already half way there.

Barnaby sat at a little round table with a stack of rough paper and some pencils, his plastic bags by his feet. Troy strolled about. A further patrol car had arrived, releasing the constable on the front door who was now seated with a Biro and notebook, his chair positioned so as to be invisible to the person being interviewed. As the gathering had remained schtum, the chief inspector was not able to follow his usual procedure of taking the most useful witness first so he had started with their spokesperson and was already ruing the day.

Barnaby had been of the belief that, after thirty years in the force, he had come across just about every type, colour, sexual proclivity and variety of political and religious zealot that his country had to offer. Within minutes he realised he was mistaken. The woman facing him gave her full name, her astral name (‘Pacifica') and her opinion that Barnaby should be writing on yellow paper rather than white—to allay confusion and harmonise his spleen. Barnaby, who had been doodling, put down his pen.

Asked about the death in the Solar she explained that the term was inappropriate. The Master had been magnetically transmuted and was now an ariel tapping into the interplanetary pool; a lord of all the Elohim and a droplet in the great field of cosmic consciousness.

‘Be that as it may, Miss Cuttle…' (Oh, very witty thought Troy.) ‘what I'm trying to get at is who was responsible for sending him there.'

‘Oh no, no, no—it wasn't like that at all.' She bestowed on him a sweet but slightly patronising smile. Barnaby felt he might be advised any minute not to worry his pretty little head.

‘How was it then?' asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Well…' May settled herself more comfortably, resting her bag like a kangaroo's pouch in her lap. ‘It all started with my regression.' She broke off noticing the increased strain on Barnaby's rugged features. ‘Oh dear…it's so difficult explaining to outsiders. Suffice it to say that we have all been on this earth many times before and, under the guidance of the Masters, I relive incidents from one or the other of these lives the third Friday of every month except for Feb. when there was a Psychic Self Defence Workshop.

‘There is always a great deal of energy humming about at regression times but today was really outstanding. I had an accident, for instance, this afternoon which I see now was not an accident at all but a metaphor. A chunk of iron fell off the roof—'

‘Could we stick to this evening, Miss Cuttle?'

‘Oh. Very well. Continuation of same, really. A symbolisation of Astarte, goddess of the moon. Then later during the actual regression, nebulae crashing about, stars colliding, darts of silver light showers and showers of golden rain, spinning moons… The passing of an arahat is of gigantic astral significance and cannot be accomplished by mere common or garden dynamism. It is no casual or accidental matter.'

‘Certainly not accidental.'

‘I see you're hankering after some sort of human intervention.'

‘That's the line this investigation will be taking—yes.'

‘When you came out of this trance or whatever it was you were in,' said Troy, ‘what exactly did you see?'

‘I've just explained all that. Moons whizzing—'

‘I mean in actual fact.'

‘Those are the facts.'

Barnaby continued, determined to tighten his questions in such a way as to leave no loophole for further astrological whimsy. ‘Now Miss Cuttle—'

‘Taster to the General.'

‘Pardon?'

‘That's what I was tonight. In Roman Britain.'

‘Really?' Never strong on ancestor-worship, Barnaby pressed on. ‘Could you tell me—or better still show me—where he and the others were sitting before you began.' He pushed over a pencil and sheet of paper, adding hurriedly as she opened her mouth, ‘White is all there is.'

May said, ‘Music's my forte you know. Not art.'

‘A rough sketch will do. Use crosses if you wish. But don't guess. If you're not sure leave a blank.'

She drew like a child, concentrating fiercely, her tongue peeping out. Barnaby looked at the results.

‘And had these positions changed when you…um…were yourself again?'

‘Oh yes. Everyone was crowding round me. Arno was crying—silly man.'

‘Why?'

‘I'd been poisoned. When I was tasting some mushrooms. They will worry so. He should have known I'd be all right. Once I was bound to a chariot wheel—'

‘You say everyone,' said Troy. ‘Did that include Craigie?'

‘No. But I didn't realise that till Christopher put the lights on.'

‘Where is he on this?' Barnaby took the drawing.

‘Nowhere. He stayed with me.'

‘You mean it was dark?' inquired Barnaby.

‘Duskish.'

‘That's handy,' said Troy.

May frowned. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Who suggested putting them off?'

‘No one. It's always done for meditative practices.'

‘So what did you see once they were on again?'

‘The Master was standing in front of his chair—'

‘Still on the dais?' Barnaby glanced down at the sketch.

‘Yes. Then he just sort of toppled down the steps.' The voice faltered and her lips trembled with remembrance. ‘His bosom had already received the celestial lance.'

The chief inspector's patience was wearing thin. Brutally he picked up the first polythene bag and pushed it across the table. ‘Your lance, Miss Cuttle. Do you recognise it?'

‘My…' She picked up the bag. The stains had already oxidised to a rusty orange. ‘But that's one of our knives from the kitchen.' She put it down again. ‘How could…?' For a long moment she stared at him, her forehead tuckered deep with puzzlement, her eyes bewildered. Then they cleared.

‘Of course.' The cast-iron confidence was back. ‘We are unawakened ones here, Inspector. We strive, we pray, we struggle for perfection, but it is a long and troubling discipleship. None of us, apparently, are ready for the revelation of divine wisdom. Knowing this, the Gods in their ineffable kindness have transmuted their sublimely mysterious weapon of dispatch into a humble household implement. Something all we acolytes can easily assimilate and comprehend. I've no doubt at all you'll find a karmic fingerprint.'