‘Yes. I made us some hot drinks then went upstairs to work on my book. Honoria took hers into the study.’
Well, it was a discrepancy all right, but a very small one. Very small indeed. In fact, if it were any smaller . . . Barnaby felt his growing excitement dim before it had a chance to really get going. For what was in a word? Especially one as flexible as ‘retire’. To some people it could mean disappearing into the bathroom for a good long soak, to others slipping away to the den, pouring a stiff one and putting on the headphones. Why shouldn’t Honoria have used it to mean going into her study to read?
But it said here she had a headache. Barnaby cursed himself for not being more specific. If only he had phrased his question more precisely. Did you go to bed straight away? Or even, did you go upstairs? Then, providing of course Amy was telling the truth, he would have caught Honoria out in a deliberate lie. Barnaby was mildly disconcerted to realise how pleased he was at the thought and how much he would have enjoyed confronting her with it.
He ran through both statements again, but there was nothing else that could explain his previous sense of unease. That tiny contradiction was the grit in the oyster.
He sighed, closed both files and opened Laura Hutton’s. Quickly scanning through the first, unrewarding meeting he turned to the follow-up, where she had drunk too much and wept and railed against the man who had, as she saw it, wilfully refused to care for her.
Barnaby read very closely, his concentration narrowed till it all but blotted out the room. As before he looked for incompatible, conflicting or just plain careless remarks. Unfortunately, by the very nature of her admissions, everything she described - the visit to Hadleigh’s house in the summer, the theft of the photograph, her love-lorn nocturnal ramblings - were all unverifiable.
There was a rattle of china, a pleasant smell of coffee and a cup and saucer were placed upon his desk.
‘Ah.’ Barnaby identified the bearer of his refreshment. ‘You’re back. What news from the Rialto?’
‘Gone over to Bingo, last I heard.’
‘Don’t try my patience, sergeant. I’m not in the mood.’
Troy, wearing his what-have-I-said-now? expression, sat down and unwrapped a Walnut Whip. ‘A right time I’ve had.’
‘With Clapton?’
‘Without Clapton, more like.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Went to the school and found he’d left early. Went to his house and the wife says he’s at his mother’s. Go to his mother’s and what do we find?’
Mr Clapton had opened the door and had been so devastated by the sight of a police car parked directly in front of his gate that, even though Troy was not wearing uniform, he had found himself seized fiercely by the arm and forcibly dragged into the house in a nice reversal of the usual procedure.
As the door was slammed behind him, Mrs Clapton appeared. Gift-wrapped in shiny nylon, she was wringing her plump hands and crying, ‘He won’t come out of the toilet.’
And he wouldn’t either, in spite of Sergeant Troy’s repeated knocks and crisply worded entreaties, spoken in a very loud voice over pop music pounding away downstairs.
When the sergeant had eventually given up, Mr and Mrs Clapton saw him off the premises as far as the gate. As he was getting into the car some people walked by and Mrs Clapton called out in a loud voice, ‘We’ll certainly keep our eyes open for him, sergeant. It’s very sad when anyone loses a little dog.’
Troy told the story well and Barnaby laughed.
‘Do you want me to get a warrant, chief? Bring him in.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘I’ve found out what “Slangwhang” means.’
‘Slang what?’
‘You know - his daft play.’
‘Oh yes. How did you do that?’
‘Looked it up in the dictionary.’
‘
You’ve
—?’ Barnaby stopped himself - immediately but, he saw, not quite in time. Christ, what an incredibly patronising thing to think, let alone say. ‘Sorry, Gavin. Really.’
‘S’ all right.’ But Troy had gone very pink. ‘Understandable. I’m no scholar, as you know. We got it for Talisa Leanne. For when she has homework, like.’
‘So what does it mean, “slangwhang”?’
‘Noisy or abusive talk. He’s a pretentious git. That the right word?’
‘Dead right.’ Barnaby finished his drink, pushed his cup aside and was about to go into his mini-discovery on the Lyddiard front when several more men returned.
He saw at once that the crew brought no further revelations. They looked dull, bored and mildly resentful, as people do who have spent several hours getting nowhere and could have told you this would be the case before they started.
Detective Constable Willoughby approached Barnaby’s desk and was relieved when Troy got up and walked away, for he had suffered more than once from the sergeant’s abrasive manner. Barnaby indicated the vacant chair and Willoughby sat, placing his hat carefully on his knees and his notebook carefully inside his hat.
Barnaby prepared to listen with a mixture of sympathy and irritation. There weren’t many pro cons as tender round the edges as this one. The lad would either have to buck his ideas up or get out of the Force. Barnaby suspected it would come to the latter and only hoped this wouldn’t be by way of a nervous breakdown.
‘I’ve been talking to Mr St John, sir, as instructed,’ began Willoughby. ‘He hasn’t anything to add to his account of Hadleigh’s visit, or the evening and its aftermath. But there was something he noticed during the day, though I’m afraid it’s very trivial—’
‘I’ll decide what’s trivial, constable.’
‘Yes, sir. As he was seeing Mr Hadleigh off the premises Miss Lyddiard came out of the gate at Plover’s Rest and cycled away.’
‘Do you have a time for this?’ Barnaby picked up his pen.
‘Eleven thirty. Mr St John remembers because he lost exactly half an hour from his writing period. She came back on two occasions that afternoon. If you recall, Borodino is almost precisely opposite—’
‘Yes, yes. Get on with it.’
‘Hadleigh didn’t open the door, but that apparently was not uncommon if people knew who it was on the step.’
There was a pause. Willoughby, having reached his conclusion, started running his fingers round the rim of his cap, then gripped the peak tightly. In no time at all the silence became unbearable to him.
‘He’s a character isn’t he - St John. As for that dog . . .’
‘Thanks, Willoughby.’ Barnaby smiled in a distracted way across the desk. ‘Well done.’
‘Oh.’ Willoughby stumbled to his feet and tucked his hat beneath his arm. The notebook fell out. He bent down and retrieved it, his face glowing with pleasure. ‘Yes sir. Thank you.’
Barnaby was not listening. Sitting back, eyes closed, he was already transported to the Green, Midsomer Worthy as it might have looked that cold, deep frosted morning on the last day of Gerald Hadleigh’s life. He imagined a certain amount of excitement would have been present at the prospect of meeting a famous author. Food no doubt had to be prepared and packed up ready to go over to Plover’s Rest. By mid morning the owner of this delightful residence would be disturbing an old man who only wanted to be left in peace to get on with his spy story. At eleven o’clock a woman, weeping her heart out and filling a basket with soggy tissues was due to be interrupted by an equally unwelcome visitor. After their meeting this person had gone straight to the home of Gerald Hadleigh. Finding him absent she had returned later. And then a third time.
Barnaby opened his eyes. His heart gathered speed as a possible reason for this oddly persistent behaviour occurred. He made himself wait a moment, breathing slowly and deeply until he felt more composed.
Laura might still be in the shop. He looked up the number and punched it out. She answered straight away.
‘Mrs Hutton? Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. I was wondering if you would do something for me.’
‘I was just going next door for a drink. Is it urgent?’
‘Yes,’ said Barnaby. ‘I rather think it is.’
Amy was in her room working on
Rompers
. She had been up there since five o’clock and so far had not been troubled either by a tinkling bell or any vocal demands.
At the moment she was worrying about her prose style, which was beginning to sound rather too cosily familiar. But was it, wondered Amy, chewing the tip of her Biro, worth constantly searching out fresh adjectives? Wouldn’t readers feel more at home with tried and true combinations? And this was not, she argued, simply an excuse for authorial laziness, for surely there were certain pairings so felicitous that even the most gifted scribe could hardly be expected to improve upon them.
A quick glance at the dawn sky from any bedroom window showed rosy fingers at their very best. Black hair, in certain lights, definitely took on the glossy hue of a raven’s wing. And where was the besotted eye that did not shine exactly like a star when alighting on the object of its affection?
Amy was slightly comforted in the knowledge that this waning of writerly confidence was not entirely unknown even among the most successful. Max Jennings had described how he always started a new book convinced that this time the relationship was going to be one of unalloyed bliss and that they would be walking off into the sunset hand in hand with never a harsh work spoken. But it never happened. Long before the end of Chapter One they’d be back in the thick of it, screaming, swearing and throwing plates.
Amy sighed, gathered her thoughts and applied herself once more. The scene on which she was working was a dramatic one. Araminta had escaped from Black Rufus by leaping from his droshky (suitably clad in a Donna Karan jump suit) into a drift of newly fallen snow. Emerging, she had been reluctantly compelled to abandon her mock-ermine Versace throw with genuine amber toggles and rhinestone hood and was now fleeing across a frozen lake pursued by bloodhounds. Amy chewed her pen some more. Decided bloodhounds were a bit tame and substituted wolves.
She had no problem empathising with her perilously placed heroine, for she herself was shivering in a sub-zero temperature. She got up and placed her mittened hand on the rusting radiator. Rather pointlessly, for it had been stone cold all day and, sure enough, remained so.
Amy jumped up and down a bit, the thick ridged soles of her fur boots bouncing on the threadbare rug. She blew on her fingertips and rubbed her cheeks hard, but the friction only made them sore. She decided, bearing in mind Honoria’s promise that the heating would definitely be looked into, to go down to the library and have a word with her sister-in-law.
Amy made her way along the landing, her passage marked by dark, heavily varnished portraits of grandly robed Lyddiards going back to the sixteenth century. Her own particular aversion was a hawk-faced judge who looked as if he not only derived great pleasure from passing the death sentence but for two pins would roll up his sleeves and carry it out.
Honoria was at her desk severely engrossed in matters dexter and sinister. She looked aloof and far removed from worldly things. Though the one-bar electric fire was on, the big, high-ceilinged room felt almost as cold as the one upstairs. Amy hovered in the doorway but without attracting any response.
‘I say . . .’
‘Blood and bone.’ Honoria was mumbling to herself. ‘That’s what counts. Blood counts. Bone counts.’
‘Honoria?’
Honoria looked up. Her eyes burned into Amy’s yet appeared not to see her.
‘It’s terribly cold. Could I—’
‘Go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Amy went away. This was plainly not the time to ask if Honoria had ordered the coke. Or if she would be prepared to down tools and bend the Neanderthal boiler to her will. As she crossed the ancient flagstones in the hall Amy stopped to pull out a couple of weeds that had seeded themselves between the cracks. The garden it seemed was trying to enter the house and, in this weather, who could blame it? She tried the cellar door, but it wouldn’t open.
Amy frowned and tried again, sure that the door was simply stuck, for she had never known it to be locked. However after two more good pushes there seemed little doubt about it. Amy hesitated and wondered if she might not just make herself a nice hot-water bottle and sit with it on her lap. But then soon she would have to come down and start preparing dinner and she could hardly carry it round the chilly kitchen.
Honoria having made it plain she did not wish to be disturbed, Amy set off to find the bunch of internal house keys herself. Sometimes they hung on an iron nail in the lumber room, sometimes they were in the drawer of the kitchen table, occasionally Honoria put them down and completely forgot where. Once Amy had found them in a flower pot in the greenhouse.
Today they were not on the nail. Amy felt her way along the bench of drying dahlias and bulbs and old seed packets without success. She was moving Honoria’s upright bicycle out of her way when she saw the keys lying in the bicycle basket.
The one for the cellar was an old-fashioned iron thing almost as long as her hand. She fitted it into the lock, where it turned smoothly. She switched on the light, which was so dim it made little difference and, holding the rail tightly, made her way down the steps.
The boiler took up so much space there was not much room for anything other than its food. A heap of coal, a smaller heap of sticks, piles of old newspapers and parish magazines tied with string. Boxes of cardboard or wood, some rags and a can of paraffin.
Amy approached the monstrous apparatus - vast, round-bellied, black with age, neglect and bad temper - with some trepidation. Pipes sprouted from the back and writhed away through the cellar ceiling. There were three dials with red pointers like those on a speedometer. They all registered 150. She gave the glass an authoritative tap. The readings fell to 98.
Amy laid her hands gingerly on the metal. It was barely warm. She opened the door and peered inside. As far as she could make out there was a pile of ashes and little else. She took the raker, a piece of metal the size and weight of a crowbar but shaped like a long T, and poked about, activating one or two pallid sparks. Then she tore up several pages of the parish magazine and laid a few thin strips across the sparks before they expired. The paper browned, crisped, flamed.