Written in Blood (26 page)

At first, loving her daughter more than she feared her husband’s displeasure, Sue had argued against the duration and frequency of these visits. Perhaps one trip a month would be more suitable, just for the afternoon? And why shouldn’t they all go?

These suggestions had provoked endless rows, with Mrs Clapton insisting that Susan was trying to turn little Mandy against them and Mr Clapton begging everyone to keep their voices down as noise travelled in the summer even over the sound of lawn mowers. Amanda had screamed and yelled and kicked to demonstrate her own preference and, once having got the hang of the telephone, screamed and sobbed down that as well, leaving her devoted nanna quite heartbroken over the poor mite’s cruel deprivations.

Of course Sue gave way. It wasn’t hard, for the three of them had so firmly annexed the child that she sensed the battle lost before it was even properly engaged. Also she had, by then, started the village play group and was surrounded every day by toddlers with tears that needed mopping, grazes to be kissed better, tempers that had to be restrained and, most satisfying of all, ears yearning for stories.

This reflection brought Sue back to the present with a start. She jumped up to turn the clock round but it was all right, there was half an hour yet. She opened the cupboard under the stairs where she kept her paints and fabric trimmings, stuffing and glue. The night before she had completed ten finger puppets made from Tampax cylinders - brilliantly coloured monkeys and hobgoblins, witches and dinosaurs. She fixed an anteater, insolently sneering down an endless snout, to her little finger, waggled him about and imagined the children’s faces when all ten magically appeared as if from nowhere, nodding and chattering to them all.

Having packed her box Sue sat down again and ran through her check list. Pick up squash from village shop. Remind Mrs Harris she was on biscuits next week. Ask Marie Bennet if her husband would have a look at the electric kettle. Contact Rex.

She had called at the house again yesterday evening and was sure that he was in, for she heard Montcalm bark, but no one came to the door. This was not at all like Rex for, apart from his precious writing period, he was always delighted to see people, sometimes to a degree where it was hard to get away.

Post! Begging aloud, ‘Methuen, Methuen, let it be Methuen’, Sue ran into the hall. But it was only a notice of a coming sale from the shop where Brian had bought his camcorder.

 

By nine thirty a.m. Barnaby, having absorbed the scenes-of-crime report, was once more in the incident room passing on its disappointing conclusions to his investigative team.

‘The only prints on the murder weapon are those of the cleaner, Mrs Bundy. One quite clear, the rest smudged, presumably by whoever picked it up and used it to batter Hadleigh’s head in. They wore gloves, leather rather than a knitted fabric. SOCO can’t tell us about rogue prints yet. They’re still eliminating. We’ve now got everyone’s dabs except those of Mrs Lyddiard, who’s too cowed to defy her sister-in-law, and Honoria herself who has flatly refused.’

‘Someone should tell her just how important this is,’ said Inspector Meredith, adding, with quick prudence, ‘sir.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Barnaby, letting slip a wintry smile. ‘Perhaps, as you are in the village, that is something you could take upon yourself, inspector?’

‘I’d be glad to, chief inspector.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Barnaby, his smile now containing rather more satisfaction, returned to the matter in hand, ‘there’s no result from Hadleigh’s nails at all. Neither skin, hair, nor fibres, so it appears that at no point did he fight back. It’s difficult to believe that he deliberately chose not to, so I think we can assume that Doctor Bullard was right and that first blow which, presumably, was totally unexpected, either killed him outright or left him helpless.

‘Slightly more luck with the chest of drawers. They were lined with a waxy paper, which didn’t help matters, but there was a small amount of dust containing particles of cashmere, pale blue in colour, which seems to indicate it was used to store sweaters or cardigans. Hardly a thrilling revelation I’m afraid. The results on Jennings’ shoes are completely negative. No footprints in the garden. Even the ones we might have expected to find from Laura Hutton have been washed away, thanks to the weather.

‘No luck with the ports telex. Jennings has not left the country, either with or without his Mercedes, via any of them. At least not under that name. But we have a result on the taxi. A Mr’ - he glanced down at his notes - ‘Winston Mogani was in the rank on the evening of the sixth when, just before ten thirty, a woman got in and asked him to drive to Midsomer Worthy. She didn’t give him an address. Just told him the way as they entered the village. They didn’t talk. She made no effort; he had his two-way radio on. Asked to describe the woman, Mr Mogani said he had people in and out of his cab all day and unless they looked like Whitney Houston he gave them no mind. This woman was fair and middle-aged although, as Mr Mogani is still in his teens, that could mean anything over thirty.

‘So far we haven’t been able to trace the driver who took her back, so you’ll have to move out from Uxbridge proper and cover the villages between there and Midsomer. It’s likely that Hadleigh would have called someone nearby. Try the Yellow Pages and, on the offchance that this woman may have been a prostitute, I’d like a thorough check on and behind the streets. Clubs, massage parlours, small ads, the lot.

‘I would also like questions asked around the village to see if anyone recalls the name of the company who moved Hadleigh. It’s a long shot but you never know.’

‘Wouldn’t be local would it, chief inspector?’ asked DC Willoughby, looking even more crackly crisp than he had yesterday. Even his smile was freshly ironed. ‘More likely someone from the Kent end.’

‘As I say, constable, a long shot. I’m hoping today, if the electoral register coughs up, we shall discover exactly where he did originally live. To end on a slightly jollier note, we’ve struck lucky with the conveyancing solicitor, who does seem to have handled other business for the dead man. I shall be seeing Mr Jocelyne later this morning. He may be keeping the documents that one would normally have expected to find at Plover’s Rest and with a bit of luck these might include the marriage certificate.’

‘How do you see that as relevant, sir?’ asked WPC Brierley. ‘Do you think there might be a link between the two deaths?’

‘I have no idea at this stage,’ replied Barnaby. ‘But guessing at unknown connections and possibilities is an important part of any investigative process. Or should be.’

‘Oh absolutely, sir.’

‘And Grace’s demise can be said to have given us the opportunity to observe Hadleigh behaving in a very unusual way.’ Barnaby paused and worked his bushy eyebrows, canvassing a response.

Sergeant Troy, assessing, with an accuracy born of long practice, his chances of toughing out the answer to this subtle suggestion, gave up before he started and amused himself by watching the others. Especially Meredith of the Yard, furiously chewing his lips and tuckering his forehead. Barnaby pointed his interrogative gaze directly at the inspector and waited for what could have been construed as an insultingly long time before continuing:

‘Hadleigh has been described by everyone we have spoken to, without exception, as a very reserved person. Rex St John has explained how desperately embarrassed he was when compelled to ask for help over this Jennings business. So why did this self-protecting, exceptionally private, buttoned-up man tell so many people about the most painful and intimate event in his life. An event so distressing that he could no longer bear to live in that part of the country where it occurred.’

‘You mean his wife’s death, sir?’ asked Troy.

‘I do, yes.’

‘Well,’ Inspector Meredith said, determined not to lose out twice. ‘I suppose because he wanted them to know.’

‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ replied Barnaby. ‘If we take into account what the revelation must have cost a man of his temperament I would say that he
needed
them to know. And what we must now ask ourselves, Inspector Meredith, is why?’

As Sue was buying her orange squash and Barnaby and Troy were about to set off for the solicitor’s office, Laura was squinting dully at her Filofax and realising that, in less than an hour, she was due to open the Spinning Wheel to receive a double-fronted Irish linen cupboard. She had bought this several days ago and it had been too wide to go into her van. The previous owner was bringing it across from Lacey Green in his Land Rover. There was still time to put him off. Without thought she reached for the phone, dialled half the number, then put her finger on the rest.

If she didn’t go in, what else would she do? Wander distractedly through her doll’s house, unable to sit down for more than five minutes at a stretch, unable to read. She would certainly not switch on the television, for watching in the daytime had always struck her as depressingly seedy. She had no wish to join what she had always assumed was an audience composed of the elderly, house-bound mums or the long-term unemployed.

She had switched the radio on and off a dozen times. Radio Three played music that was either totally insipid or so rowdy it hurt her head. Radio Four offered rising young lunatics from Westminster swearing eternal fealty to the electorate with their hands on their wallets. When the unctuous pieties of
Thought for the Day
started she had almost thrown the transistor across the kitchen.

She had never appreciated before that it was possible to believe and disbelieve something at the same time. She knew Gerald was dead. The police had told her so. There was to be an inquest. The funeral, though yet to be arranged, would assuredly be taking place in the not too distant future. Only yesterday she had wretchedly accepted the fact herself.

So why was she now compellingly convinced that if she walked round to Plover’s Rest he would still be there to open the door and greet her in the same sad, stiff, over-courteous way he always had. Laura wondered, and not for the first time, if she would have loved him so much, and so persistently, had he not, from the very beginning, been wearing a Keep Off The Grass sign. Pointless to speculate.

These reflections drove her into the bathroom, where she showered, wrapped herself in a robe and looked for something to wear, but without any great enthusiasm. Baggy cossack trousers of sage wool, a mustard silk shirt, a capacious padded coat of ivory wool and leather. Knee high chestnut boots, amber beads, hair pulled through a black velvet chignon. A quick and skilful make-up followed by a spray of Cabochard. And all the while marvelling at herself and at the absolute ineradicability of routine.

She breakfasted on an ice-cold Fernet Branca. She still wasn’t hungry and was beginning to feel light-headed. She wondered if there was still alcohol in her blood and if it was safe to drive. She had eaten no solid food for three days, sure that, even if she prepared something, she would not be able to swallow. There was a permanent obstruction in her throat that only liquids over forty per cent proof seemed able to bypass.

She put the empty glass next to several shards of delicate china that had been placed carefully in the sink by that clodhopping policeman. What did he expect her to do with them? Get out the Araldite? God knows why he had chosen to make coffee in soup bowls. And Sèvres at that.

About to leave, Laura suddenly turned back and opened the door of the yellow-silk sitting room. It was full of winter colour, iron grey, cold. For the first time she saw the room as others - Barnaby for instance - might have done. Scaled down, so neatly arranged, prim really. Only the portrait had the quickness of life in it. The heavy folds of velvet at the young boy’s hip glowed even without the benefit of the gilded picture light. Moved by an impulse she could not understand Laura leaned forwards and laid her hand over the mournfully disturbed green eyes.

The telephone went. She let it be. It was probably only Sue. She had rung every day since the murder, inviting Laura round for coffee. Wishing to be kind no doubt, but there was something in Laura’s fastidious nature that jibed at picking over what would be, for her, extremely emotional pieces. Rehashing the evening that had ended with Gerald’s death, worrying away at the whys and wherefores. She was also afraid she would be unable to control her feelings and start weeping publicly for him.

It struck her that she would no longer have to go to the Writers Circle. She could never remember what she had said about her work from one meeting to the next and always expected someone to pick her up, but everyone was so interested in their own stuff this had never happened.

Stepping outside, she winced as the skin on her face contracted in the cold air. In the bird bath a wren, having quite misjudged the temperature, had leapt in for a quick splash and was now frantically skidding around on the ice in circles. Making a mental note to thaw the water when she got back, Laura creaked across the splintering puddles to unlock the garage.