‘Gosh - I’ve been so carried away I’ve not told you what else has happened.’
‘Something happened here, too.’
‘Amy - what?’
‘You first.’
‘OK. I’ve been really worried about Rex. I rang two or three times and got no reply, so I went round and discovered him in an appalling state.’
Sue described her visit. Amy listened closely to the very end then said, ‘But surely it can’t be true. I mean - that Max Jennings murdered Gerald.’
‘That’s what I said. Famous people just don’t do such things.’
‘For a start the police would have arrested him. It would have been in all the papers.’
‘I tried to convince Rex there must be a rational explanation. He was . . . dying, Amy. Actually dying of shame. It was dreadful.’
‘You must have worked a miracle. I saw him on the Green this morning with Montcalm.’
‘Yes. And he’s going to try writing again, which will help. But he won’t be his old self till they find out who really did it.’
‘Mrs Bundy said yesterday they were looking for a suitcase.’
‘What, one of Gerald’s?’
‘Yes. Brown leather. Apparently whoever killed him took it away.’
‘That definitely points to a burglar. I must tell Rex. It will cheer him up.’
Sue began repacking the cake. Amy tried to stuff the cork back into the wine bottle.
‘Do they know what was in it?’
‘The entire contents of a chest of drawers,’ replied Amy, ‘according to Mrs B. She went on about it at great length.’
‘I’m surprised Honoria didn’t shut her up.’
‘Reading her runes elsewhere. Got it!’ Amy spoke too soon. The cork popped straight out again, shot across the room and rolled under the cooker. As she bent to fish it out she spoke again, this time with her voice all squeezy. ‘I’ll give a hand with Rex. Visit him, I mean. And maybe we could ask Laura.’
‘Ah - that’s the other thing I meant to tell you. She’s moving’
‘Moving?’ Amy was washing the cork under the tap. ‘Moving where?’
‘Doesn’t know yet. I went round last night. I was so worried about Rex and desperately needed to talk to somebody. I could have saved myself the trouble. She was in ever such a funny mood. To tell you the truth, I think she’d been drinking.’
‘I’m not surprised. This awful business is enough to drive anyone to drink.’
‘Don’t worry about that Amy,’ (the cork was proving twice as awkward the second time) ‘tell me your news. I have to go in a sec.’
‘Well, it was yesterday. Just gone one.’ Amy spoke so seriously and looked so perturbed that Sue, who had got up after packing her basket, sat straight down again. ‘Honoria came in complaining that lunch was late. And maybe because I was extra cold or lonely or unhappy or hungry or depressed I finally told her I’d had enough.’
‘
Amy!
’
‘And that I was going to leave.’
‘You didn’t.’ Sue gazed at her friend in deep consternation, as if surprised to find her still alive. ‘What did she say?’
‘It was awful. She started going on about how she’d get the heating fixed and give me more money for food. Then she said I couldn’t go because she had promised Ralph she’d look after me.’
‘Oh, deep dread.’
‘Exactly. And it was so weird because I could see it wasn’t the truth. I don’t know why she really wants me here—’
‘Unpaid slavery—’
‘No. Well, perhaps, but that’s not the main reason. I’ve got a feeling that I have something she wants. I can sense her watching me. Sometimes, when I’m working in the house or in the garden, she’ll come up so quietly, like she did yesterday, and I won’t know she’s there. It’s really frightening. She’s waiting for something, Sue. And she doesn’t want me to go until it’s happened.’
‘But you must go.’
‘Yes. I have plans. Remember those ads I told you about - in
The Lady
? I’m going to start replying. Thing is, can I give your address? I don’t want her to know.’
‘Of course you can.’ A vista of loneliness opened suddenly in front of Sue and desolation briefly marked her face.
‘Don’t look like that, love. We’ll write. All the time.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’ll need to come back often. To visit Ralph.’
A couple of hours later, Barnaby, awaiting the arrival of Mrs Lyddiard, was jotting down a few notes. Pointers to questions rather then the questions themselves for, although he could be relentlessly inflexible when the need to pin down was urgent, he preferred to work in an open-ended, even slightly meandering way, casting his net wide. Visitors often left his office after having been quite shrewdly interviewed feeling they’d enjoyed nothing more than a pleasant conversation.
Barnaby was patient in the way an animal squatting silently outside the lair of its prey is patient. And he was genuinely curious about people, unlike Troy, who was not interested in anyone for their own sake, but merely for what they could contribute to the matter in hand. Barnaby’s method got results. People told him things they hadn’t meant to tell him. Sometimes they told him things they didn’t even know they knew.
Audrey Brierley looked around the door and asked if he would like a drink of something. Almost at the same time Sergeant Troy arrived with Mrs Lyddiard. Barnaby ordered two cups of tea and put his calls on hold. Troy quickly worked out that he was
de trop
and took himself off to the incident room.
The chief inspector hung up Amy’s coat, offered her the most comfortable chair and came out from behind his desk to sit on the settee. They stirred their drinks in silence, Amy looking round the room with shy interest.
‘This is just an informal chat, Mrs Lyddiard. As we were not able to talk the other day.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid Honoria—’ Amy broke off, realising she was about to be disloyal in front of strangers. She swallowed some tea. ‘This is delicious. Thank you.’
‘What I really wanted to ask about,’ continued Barnaby, when both their cups were empty, ‘were your impressions of that last evening at Plover’s Rest. If you enjoyed it, for instance.’
‘Oh I did,’ exclaimed Amy. ‘It was great to meet a real writer.’
She enthused, as he remembered Mrs Clapton had done, over Jennings’ courtesy, helpfulness and apparently genuine interest in his audience’s accomplishments.
‘I was really sorry when it was over. I think we all felt inspired.’
‘Did you get the impression that Mr Hadleigh enjoyed it?’
‘It’s hard to say. He was very quiet.’ Amy put her cup and saucer carefully on the carpet. ‘Poor man.’
‘Are you aware that he and Max Jennings already knew each other?’
‘Yes. Rex told Sue. He’s been terribly depressed about it all. Feels responsible. Ermm . . . have you . . . ? That is . . . if you’ve exonerated Max - if he’s in the clear - it would help Rex so much. To know, I mean . . .’ Amy tailed off, hoping she had not committed some misdemeanour by asking.
‘I’m sure the problem will be resolved.’ Barnaby smiled to soften any suggestion of a rebuff and moved on. ‘After the meeting I understand you and Miss Lyddiard went straight home.’
‘Yes. I made us some hot drinks then went upstairs to work on my book. Honoria took hers into the study.’
‘What’s your book about?’
‘Oh.’ Amy flushed with embarrassment and pleasure at being asked. ‘What isn’t it about? High finance, drug smuggling, lovers lost and found, a priceless black Russian pearl, a kidnapped foundling.’
‘It sounds irresistible.’
‘I’m banking on it.’
Amy, more relaxed now, was sitting back in her chair. Barnaby noticed she was wearing the same shabby trousers and butterfly cardigan that she had had on the other day. Her boots were very worn and one of the seams was splitting. He wondered what her financial position was. Pretty parlous, surely, to be prepared to live at Gresham House.
‘Do you find the writing group a help?’
‘Up to a point. We read our stuff out but then, none of us being very experienced, we’re at a bit of a loss to know what to do next.’
‘What did you think of Hadleigh’s writing?’
‘A bit thin. He worked very hard on his stories but, even after several drafts, there didn’t seem to be anything much in them.’
‘And your impressions of him as a person?’
‘I can’t tell you anything definite, inspector. I just didn’t know him well enough.’
‘Indefinite will do.’
This time Amy paused for so long that Barnaby thought she had decided not to answer. When she did speak it was plainly with great reluctance.
‘He reminded me of a character I saw in a film, a long time ago. An elderly man - the film was in flashback - who had been traumatised as a boy. He had been used by two grown-ups of quite different social classes - this was in Edwardian times - to pass love letters between them and the discovery of this, plus the dreadful aftermath, ruined his whole life. His face, all his movements, had a dreadful, frozen lifelessness. As if every bit of him was mortally impaired.’ Amy frowned deeply, her pretty face marred by pity and distress. ‘Gerald was like that.’
‘How very sad,’ said the chief inspector, meaning it. Then, risking alienation, ‘But how interesting.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Amy, looking somewhat shamefaced. ‘I used to wonder about him a lot. Writers are awful. So nosy. I’d make up different pasts for him. Different histories.’
‘But he was quite forthcoming about his background, I understand.’
‘Oh, I didn’t believe any of that.’
‘Really?’ said Barnaby, leaning very slightly forward.
‘It was so sparse. Like one of his stories. True life’s all muddle and mess, isn’t it? You can’t just list a few neat things and say, “This is who I am”. It was as if’ - Amy tuckered her brows again - ‘as if he’d learnt it.’
Even as Barnaby smiled and nodded he wondered why he was feeling quite so pleased with this conversation, for there was little new in it. He decided it was because he enjoyed looking at, and listening to, Mrs Lyddiard. Her sweet round face and mop of curly hair reminded him of his wife, though Amy was ingenuously friendly where Joyce was tartly subtle.
Amy got up to put her cup and saucer on the desk and noticed the large, leather-framed photograph with its back to her.
‘Do you mind if . . . ?’
Barnaby said, ‘Of course not.’
She turned the frame round and said, as everyone, without exception always did, ‘Good heavens. What an absolutely beautiful child.’
‘She’s grown up now.’
‘And that’s your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Easy to see which side—’ Amy broke off, crimsoned and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Gosh, how rude. I’m so sorry. What must you . . . Oh dear. I don’t know where to . . . Ohh . . .’
Barnaby burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. Her confusion was so overwhelmingly complete it was comical. Then he stopped, for she was clearly genuinely upset.
‘Please, Mrs Lyddiard, don’t be put out. If I had a fiver for every time I’ve heard that remark I could retire tomorrow.’
‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’
‘Not at all. The first occasion was the midwife.’
Amy seemed almost about to smile, changed her mind and went back to her chair. More to ease the moment than because he was really interested, Barnaby asked if she had children. Amy shook her head.
‘For a time it didn’t seem important. We were very happy and it seemed enough. Then, when I was in my late thirties, I started having second thoughts. But Ralph dissuaded me.’ She pressed her hands together, the fingers interlocking with tension, tugging against each other. ‘I thought afterwards he must have had some sort of premonition. Perhaps knew, even then, how ill he was and didn’t want to leave me with a young child. But he was wrong. I’d give anything now - anything - to have a part of him still with me.’
Barnaby nodded with a sympathy that was far from feigned. He could not imagine, could not bear to imagine, life without his daughter. They might not see, or even hear from her, for weeks on end, but he had to know that she was out there somewhere. Living, breathing, breaking hearts.
‘He had cancer.’ Amy sounded introspective and so distant she might have been talking to herself. ‘That is, he had chronic hepatitis that wasn’t diagnosed and treated in time. We were so far away from a hospital you see. Or a good doctor.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘All the awful people who live forever. Murderers and terrorists. Army generals who won’t let food trucks through, while Ralph . . .’ Tears started from Amy’s eyes and she brushed them fiercely away. ‘The dearest man. It’s so unfair. Honoria blamed me.’
Barnaby released a sound of demurring protest reinforced by a disbelieving movement of his head.
‘It’s true. She said the most terrible thing, the cruellest thing. I’ve never told anyone - not even Sue. He’d been unconscious for days in that hospital in Spain and we’d been taking turns to sit with him. I’d been resting and I was going back along the corridor towards his room when Honoria came out of the doctor’s office. She gripped my arms - I had the marks for days - and screamed in my face. “If you’d loved him enough he wouldn’t have died.” It was the most dreadful shock. I didn’t know he’d gone, you see. It happened while I was asleep. It was the only time I’ve ever seen her show any emotion.
‘She’s taken him back now. The headstone has his name and a single space for hers. His room with all his childhood things is permanently locked. She’s always in there. I hear her sometimes reading out his letters or school reports. But none of that matters really. I sit by his grave and talk to him and we’re as close as we ever were. All the rest is trimmings.’
After she had finished speaking Amy sat in silence for a while. There was an almost inaudible click as the minute hand on the clock jumped round and a faint humming from the overhead fluorescent light. But in spite of the brightness of the room and the constant shrilling of telephones and the human clatter just beyond the thin walls, Amy was aware that she felt very much at ease.