‘You don’t admire Mr Jennings’ novels?’
‘Never read them. Got better things to do with my time.’
‘Can you recall who first suggested inviting him?’ Barnaby watched Brian’s reaction write itself across his face. He didn’t know. He hated to admit he didn’t know. But if he made an answer up he might be proved wrong, thus losing face even more notably.
‘You’ll have to leave that with me, chief inspector.’ Brian stroked his beard thoughtfully. He had grown it as soon as he was physically able, to hide the numerous large pink shiny warts on his chin.
Troy, who had got Brian well sussed, curled his lip. He could just see the little squit asking round, finding the answer and phoning in having ‘just remembered’. What a piss artist.
‘Did you talk to Mr Hadleigh during the course of the evening? Get any idea why he was so withdrawn?’
‘Not really. The conversation was general. As I’ve already explained.’ He spoke tersely and glanced at his watch.
‘Do you have any idea who might be responsible for Mr Hadleigh’s death?’
‘Me?’ In the centre of his bushy beard Brian’s wet, pink lips rounded to a wet, pink O, like the orifice of some tentacular sea creature. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’d’ve thought the question pretty clear, sir,’ murmured Troy.
‘But you’re surely not—I mean . . .’
Here we go, thought Troy, pinching the final biscuit. Altogether now, one, two, three: break-in, break-in. Wasn’t it a break-in? Brian did not let him down.
‘There was no sign of a forced entry, sir,’ replied Barnaby, omitting for the moment the matter of an unsecured kitchen. ‘Would you describe Mr Hadleigh as a cautious person?’
‘In what way?’
‘Might he for instance be likely to open the door to just anyone late at night?’
‘Doubt it. You know what they’re like, the professional classes. Piling up more stuff than any person could possibly need in one lifetime then frightened to death someone else might get a bite of their cherry.’ Troy snorted at the unconscious
double entendre
then turned his snort into a cough. ‘He’d got a door chain, window locks, burglar alarm. They all have round the Green.’
‘Given the present climate,’ said Barnaby dryly, ‘they’d be foolish to do otherwise.’
‘But all this hardware’s just a challenge to a really enterprising kid,’ cried Brian. ‘I’ve tried to explain this but will they listen?’ He sighed briefly over the intransigence of the bourgeoisie. ‘You should see Laura Hutton’s place - been there yet?’ Barnaby shook his head. ‘Like the Bastille.’
‘She’s probably got a lot of fancy pieces,’ said Troy. ‘Being in the trade, like.’
‘Some trade. Ripping off pensioners then selling the stuff at fifty times the price.’
‘An attractive woman all the same,’ murmured Barnaby, recalling his purchase of Joyce’s footstool.
‘If you like tall redheaded icebergs with more money than they know what to do with.’ If? thought Troy.
If ?
This man was round the twist. ‘Personally I’ve always found her completely unreal.’
‘You were Mr Hadleigh’s nearest neighbour—’
‘Only geographically. We didn’t mix.’
‘He was a widower, I understand. Would you happen to know if he was . . . well . . . emotionally involved with anyone at the time of his death?’
‘If you mean having it off,’ said Brian, with forthright contempt, ‘why don’t you say so? The answer’s no. At least not with anyone in Midsomer Worthy.’
‘How come you’re so sure, Mr Clapton?’ asked Troy.
‘Easy to see you don’t live in a village. Half the people there’ve got nothing better to do, once they’ve finished the
Times
crossword and checked their share prices, but stare out of the window. They don’t miss a trick, believe me.’
‘I wonder if there is anything you could tell us about Mr Hadleigh’s background?’
‘A civil servant who had taken early retirement. And we all know what that means. A platinum handshake and a fat pension all out of the taxpayer’s pocket. I’ve no time for people of that ilk.’ He caught the chief inspector’s eye and seemed to read something there that stayed his tongue. He paused, then added, rather awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry that he’s dead, of course.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Barnaby. ‘Now - if we could get back to yesterday evening. You left Plover’s Rest when exactly?’
‘Ten fifteen.’
‘And then?’
‘Home, where else? Marked some essays for the morning and went to bed.’
‘Sleep well?’
‘Oh yes. Do a
proper
day’s work and you have no trouble dropping off.’
The look he gave them underlined the implication in his words. Barnaby, though he had experienced in his long career tiredness so absolute that, waking or sleeping, he seemed to be trudging endlessly down a dark corridor of exhaustion in iron boots, rode this supercilious attack with ease. Troy took it personally, as he did everything, and reacted as if stung.
‘So, just to recap,’ said Barnaby, ‘you went home, did some checking and went to bed.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Brian shot his cuff and studied his watch. He managed to give the impression that though everyone else in the room might have world enough and time, his own was very tightly structured, crammed with exciting incident and that a plane for LA was standing by even as they spoke.
‘In other words, you did not go out at all?’
‘No.’ After a lengthy pause Brian picked up his cup, put it down again. Coughed. Blew his nose and peered into his hanky before putting it back into his pocket.
‘Mrs Clapton, on the other hand,’ said Sergeant Troy quietly (almost as if musing to himself), ‘seemed to have had a lot of trouble dropping off. She was still awake in the small hours. Heard Max Jennings drive away.’
‘Really.’
‘Yes. Really.’
There was an even longer pause during which the two policemen exchanged confident, almost amused glances not missed (and not meant to be missed) by the interviewee. They were both enjoying his predicament but Troy more so for he had, by nature, an unkind heart.
Brian removed his glasses and polished them. They were little and round with cruel steel rims. The type that even good-looking people cannot wear to advantage.
‘You understand why we are asking this question, Mr Clapton?’ Barnaby said eventually.
‘Um . . .’
‘Mr Hadleigh’s murder took place between eleven and the early hours of this morning.’
Barnaby eased himself off the sofa and stood, a big broad man, towering over the desk. His expression was paternal. He smiled down at Brian with deep, confidence-inducing expectation and waited. It didn’t take long.
‘Oh!’ Brian struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I did pop out. Just for a quick turn around the Green. To blow the cobwebs away.’ He looked up, half wary, half seeking approval, and gave a rather infantile smile.
‘See anyone?’
‘No,’ Brian said, adding, lest there should be the slightest confusion, ‘no one at all.’
‘Well, I think that’s it.’ Having got his way Barnaby let his jaws part in a smile. ‘For now.’
‘Thank you,’ said Brian.
As they were leaving the office Miss Panter called out, ‘Mr Clapton? Your wife rang just after your meeting started. She said it was urgent. If you’d like to call her back by all means use my phone.’
‘I’m that hungry.’ Troy, caught up in the Causton one-way system, crept around the market square, which was crammed with stalls covered in bright awnings and traders shouting out impossible never-to-be-repeated bargains.
‘You want to rob me, darling?’ yelled a man holding a cauliflower in each hand. ‘Come and rob me. I’m ready, willing and past it.’
‘
You’re
hungry?’ Barnaby made his irritation plain. His sergeant’s capacity to lower endless piles of highly calorific foodstuffs without ever putting the slightest pressure on his belt had long been a sore point. ‘You’ve just seen off half the contents of Huntley and Palmer’s warehouse. How on earth can you be hungry?’
‘Perhaps we could pop into the canteen for a lash-up.’ Troy turned right and pushed aggressively into a traffic jam inching along the High Street. ‘After we’ve seen Mrs Hutton. And speak of the devil . . .’
They had ground to a halt on a level with the Magpie’s shop front. A CLOSED sign hung on the door. There was a large tapestry hanging in the window showing a Bruegelesque scene of unbridled merrymaking. Rosy-cheeked burghers banged foaming tankards on rough-hewn planks. Snowy coifed buxoms fell out of their frocks, children in hand-cobbled footwear stuffed their faces with hunks of bread and one man lay flat on his face in the mud. Troy regarded it thoughtfully.
‘Bit like our Christmas social.’
No response. Why do I bother? he asked himself. Working my buns off trying to bring a little jollity into the miserable bugger’s life and for what? Might as well save my breath. I shall get one of Mrs Clapton’s dragons for the back window. Thank You For Not Laughing In Our Car.
‘Odd her being closed on a Wednesday. You’d think it’d be the busiest day.’
‘She must have heard about Hadleigh. I imagine there’s been quite a ring-round going on. She might still be on the premises. There’s narrow opening just here . . .’
Troy swung on the wheel.
‘I said narrow!’
‘OK. OK.’ Troy responded sharply as he always did to any adverse comment on his driving. And there was certainly no problem on this occasion. Twice the width of the paint. At least.
He pulled into the large asphalt parking area at the rear of the Magpie which it shared with the Blackbird bookshop next door. A Ford Transit van and a scarlet Porsche in beautiful condition were parked there. Over the solid rear door of the Magpie was a British Telecom burglar alarm. The door itself was secured by two mortice deadlocks and flanked by long rectangular windows which were heavily barred. Barnaby knocked once and then again more firmly. There was not the slightest reverberation. He could have been rapping a block of concrete. He pressed his ear to the jamb, but could pick up no response. Troy slipped his hands through the iron bars and tapped on the glass.
‘Someone in there, chief. I think they’re coming.’ He took off his headgear, smoothed his hair and replaced the cap at a more rakish angle. Then he turned up his coat collar and rounded off the transformation by allowing a half smile, warm and, he hoped, mysteriously compelling, to play lightly about his lips. A shadow appeared on the glass and a voice, promisingly husky it seemed to Troy, said, ‘What is it?’
‘Causton CID, Mrs Hutton,’ said Barnaby. ‘Like a word, please.’
A bolt was withdrawn and then a second, heavier and needing a spot of oil. A chain rattled, a key turned in one of the mortice locks. Troy, holding his breath, realised he had lost his light but compelling smile and hurriedly tacked it on again.
‘I shouldn’t bother, Gavin.’
‘Sir?’
‘She’s too old for you.’
The smile vanished and Troy looked perturbed. This was not so much at having his mind read - the chief had always been good at that (far too good actually) - but by the heretical suggestion that anyone with more money than they knew what to do with could possibly have a sell-by date.
‘Come in.’
Laura Hutton was standing behind the door, covering her face. Barnaby presented his card. She didn’t even glance at it, but walked away towards a tiny office of glass and tongue-and-groove boarding which had been made by enclosing a small corner of the large, high-ceilinged space through which she was now leading them.
Barnaby looked around him. He could have been in the props room of Joyce’s amateur theatre group. Furniture stacked on top of itself, paintings two or three deep facing the wall. Ornaments. Cardboard boxes, with lot numbers stamped on, crammed with old cutlery and other household junk.
Her office had a tiny antique desk, the surface almost invisible beneath a Macintosh LC, telephone, fax and answering machine. The air was scented by a soapy fragrance. Barnaby guessed that she had probably heard his first knock and had washed her face in the pretty flowered hand basin before coming to the door. If this was in an attempt to conceal the fact that she had been crying it had failed, one could say miserably.
Her face was screwed up with distress and, even as Barnaby apologised for the intrusion, her eyes shimmered and brimmed with fresh moisture. At last, he thought, someone is weeping for Gerald Hadleigh.
‘I’m sorry.’ She caught the tears, now pouring down her cheeks, with the brightly coloured silk square in her hand. ‘It’s the shock . . .’
Oh, more than that. The chief inspector watched her mouth, once speech had stopped, fall into a slack, grief-stricken curve. Much more than that.
‘Then you know why we’re here, Mrs Hutton?’
‘Yes. I can’t believe it. Can’t . . .’ Her narrow shoulders shook and she covered her eyes with her hands. She said ‘sorry’ again.
‘I shouldn’t have let you in. I thought I could cope.’
Barnaby hesitated, unsure whether to continue. Not out of sensitivity. He was a sensitive man but it had never stopped him doing extremely insensitive things if he had to. But because he could see that she might, in all probability, go to pieces. He’d get nowhere and next time her memories of the present encounter could well make questioning her that much more difficult. He said, ‘Would you like us to come back another time?’
‘No. Not now you’re here.’ Laura reached out and switched off the desk light. In the dimness that ensued she seemed slightly more comfortable. She sat down in a padded swivel chair, the only seating in the room. Troy rested his notebook on the filing cabinet and only hoped he could read his writing. Barnaby leaned against the door. ‘Though I don’t quite understand what you want.’
‘Just a word about last night, Mrs Hutton.’
‘I see.’ She obviously didn’t see and her dull, lifeless voice indicated that neither did she care.