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.
Between the Lines
Joyce Barnaby stood over the gas stove, warmly wrapped in a candlewick dressing gown, splashing fat over an egg in the frying pan, netting the bright orange yolk with threads of white. All wrong of course - it should have been boiled, then shelled, but he had been too tired for dinner last night so she felt he was entitled to a little treat. The grilled bacon was very lean and he had already had his porridge - oats and bran mixed to lower the cholesterol and shoot him full of B vitamins.
‘Oh, cat!’ Attracted by the smell, Kilmowski, having already breakfasted exceedingly well, had rolled across the kitchen floor, dug his claws into Joyce’s robe and started to climb towards the source.
‘Get down . . . Ow! That hurt.’ She unhooked the kitten, assembled the food on a warm plate and took it over to her husband.
‘We’re off the front page, thank goodness,’ he said, refolding the
Independent
. ‘If it hadn’t been for Jennings we’d never have been on it in the first place.’
‘He must have seen a paper by now. Perhaps he’ll get in touch today.’
Barnaby did not reply. He sat, regarding his breakfast, with deep dismay. ‘Isn’t it sausage this morning?’
‘Sausage Sunday.’ Joyce tapped her list of menus on the peg top notice board. ‘And you shouldn’t really have one then.’
‘One!’
‘If you’re lucky.’
He regarded her sternly. ‘Nobody’s indispensable, Joyce.’
‘Is that right?’ His wife picked up the coffee pot.
‘In Ancient Greece you could get a female slave for two spears.’
‘In Arbury Crescent wives who aren’t appreciated join the Open University And run off with their tutors.’
‘I hate this stuff.’ He scratched some mealy, wheyish paste across his toast. ‘No wonder they call it “virtually fat free”. You feel like a saint if you manage to keep it down.’
‘Stop moaning.’
‘Cough mixture, bicycle oil and fish paste.’
‘Kiki?’ Joyce clicked her tongue as she sat down and jiggled the pingpong ball tied with string to the back of her chair. ‘Ki-ki-ki . . .’
‘Five minutes ago you were telling it off.’
‘Oh look, Tom.’ Joyce clapped her hands with pleasure. ‘Look at him play.’
‘Just keep it away from my bacon.’
‘He’s purring.’
‘Of course he’s purring - he’s a cat. What do you expect him to do? Break into a chorus from
Rigoletto
?’ Barnaby watched his wife sourly. ‘It’s only here till they get back - all right?’
‘I know that.’ Joyce poured the coffee. ‘Why are you being so horrid? It’s not my fault you can’t stop eating.’
‘Thanks.’ Barnaby took his cup. ‘Where’s your breakfast?’
‘I’ll have something later.’ She stirred her drink awkwardly, the spoon in her left hand. Kilmowski, wide eyed, was clinging to her right arm like a small alarmed muff. His grey silk belly, engorged with milk, bulged.
‘Look at that. Stuffed to the gills.’
‘Tom?’
‘Mm.’ He munched morosely on his final crust.
‘You are sticking to your diet?’
‘Yes.’
‘At work I mean.’
‘Oh God, Joycey - don’t nag.’
‘It’s important. You know what they said at your medical.’
‘Mmm.’ He drained his coffee and wheezed to his feet. ‘What are we having tonight again?’
‘Lamb’s liver with herbs and mushrooms.’
‘Don’t forget to buy fresh marjoram.’ In the hall Barnaby’s daughter gazed up at him, gravely beautiful in white bonnet and severe dress, from the doormat. He picked up the
Radio Times
took it in to his wife and kissed her goodbye.
‘Take care driving, love.’
‘Yes. I think I’ll put the chains on.’
‘Make sure you’re well wrapped up. It’s snowing.’
Sue hovered around her daughter like a bird with a single fledgling. Amanda was propped up against the sink, chewing one of her mother’s bran and walnut cookies and wishing it was a Dime bar. Today everything was black - skirts, tights, sneakers, eye liner, nails. Her hair, unwashed for many a long day, was piled into a dry pyramid.
‘It’s not snowing. These things are so shitty.’ She walked over to the waste bin and emptied her mouth. ‘Why can’t we have proper cake like everyone else?’
Two reasons actually. One: they were full of suspicious substances, many listed in Sue’s
E for Additives
book. Two: cash. There was never enough. Although Brian always seemed to be able to drum up money for his own indulgences, the latest being a director’s chair along the back of which he was now stencilling his name, he was very tight indeed when it came to the housekeeping. Expecting a hot meal every evening and a roast for Sunday lunch, he gave his wife barely enough for a week of cooked breakfasts.
All Sue’s play-group wages, such as they were, disappeared into the fund and still she could barely manage. She had asked for more, of course, but Brian had refused, saying she was as incompetent at handling his hard-earned salary as she was at everything else and that any increase would simply be frittered away. At the last time of asking he had lost his temper and vowed to solve the problem ‘once and for all’.
That weekend she had handed over her thirty pounds and Brian had gone shopping with her, marching up and down the aisle at Causton’s main supermarket and throwing stuff into a trolley to the running accompaniment of a grandiloquent directive.
‘See? This is an excellent buy - three for the price of two. And here’s rump steak on special offer - why don’t we ever have steak if it’s this cheap? Melon down again. And grapes. And look - Bulgarian Merlot only two forty-five . . .’
At the checkout the bill came to fifty-three pounds. Brian, so sure of his ability to balance the books that he had not brought his credit card, had to stand, crimson with rage and humiliation, while a supervisor was called. A second trolley was wheeled alongside to take all the things that Brian could not afford back to the shelves. The very long queue had not been sympathetic. In the car park he had really let rip.
‘Why didn’t you
tell
me? You know how much things cost.’ He stowed the cardboard boxes in the boot and slammed it. ‘God knows how people on the Social manage to eat and smoke as well.’
‘They live on cardboard pizzas, oven chips and tins past their sell-by date,’ replied Sue, not quite managing to keep the satisfaction from her voice and being made to regret it all the way home.
‘Mandy? Mand?’ He was calling now from the front step. The door was wide open, transforming the cosy kitchen into an ice box. ‘Time for the bus.’
‘Awri.’ Mandy shrouded herself in a funereal horse blanket, flung the dark, dreary folds about a bit and picked up her Snoopy lunch box.
‘Make sure you have a hot drink with that. Not just pop.’
‘I might go to my nan’s after school.’
‘Oh. Thank you for letting me know.’ Sue gave the smile that constant disparagement had made a little foolish. ‘Bye-bye then.’
The door banged and they were gone. Sue felt, as she always did at such moments, immense relief slightly tinged with guilt. She put a few bits of coal into the greedy Aga,
in situ
when they had bought the place and always on the point of being given its marching orders, and drew the old armchair up close.
The house settled round her, silent and comforting. She breathed in and out slowly, calming down, letting go of the miserable sense of oppression that never left her when the family were present.
Family! What a misnomer that was. Whilst Sue was not foolish enough to be taken in by the sickly radiance of the cereal-crunching simpletons in television commercials, she was sure that, between their phoney jollity and the isolating and loveless desolation pervading Trevelyan Villas, there must somewhere exist a golden mean. Mothers and fathers and children who both argued with and supported each other, loved and hated each other, helped each other out in times of trouble and united fiercely at the merest hint of outside criticism.
She wondered, as she frequently did even when telling herself not to, if there had been a point somewhere in the past where she could have chosen a different path. She had got pregnant - so what? It had been 1982 - not the thirties when single mothers were practically stoned in the street. She could have resisted her parents’ pressure and that of the Claptons, terrified lest the neighbours discover that their son had got his ‘fiancée’ into trouble. Brian, newly in lust (for Sue had ‘fallen’ for Amanda the first time they had gone to bed), seemed very keen and, of course, an abortion was out of the question.
Sue had always loved children and had hoped one day to have at least four. When Amanda was a baby Sue had been as close to perfect happiness as she had ever known. Bathing and dressing her daughter, playing with her, teaching her to walk. Simply loving her. Even Brian’s rapidly souring demeanour and the start of his assertions that she had deliberately trapped him into marriage were rendered harmless by this golden centre to her life.
But then, gradually, everything had changed. Brian’s parents, only five miles away and doting on their only grandchild, demanded more and more of her time. Brian would drive over there every weekend, sometimes leaving Amanda for the whole two days. She would always return with an armful of presents, tired, fretful and sick from too many sweets.