As soon as Barnaby climbed out he heard the howling. Terrible agonised cries like an animal in a trap. He felt his skin ice over.
‘Jesus!’ Troy joined him in the porch. ‘What the hell is that?’
A constable positioned inside the hall became alert in recognition. ‘Everyone’s upstairs, sir. Along the gallery to your left. Far end.’
Troy stared around as they climbed, too disturbed by the dreadful sounds to experience his usual knee-jerk resentment when entering what he presumed to be the environment of the upper crust. He sniffed and said, ‘What a stink.’
‘Joss sticks.’
‘Smells like cat mess.’
They found Scene of Crime in a long room almost bereft of furniture. Controlled businesslike people moving with quiet efficiency. A photographer sat on some steps, a Pentax with an attached flash dangling from his neck. A second constable was at the door. Barnaby asked who was making all the row.
‘One of the people who lives here, sir. Apparently he’s a bit mental.’
‘That should cheer things up.’ Barnaby crossed over to the dais and crouched by the white robed corpse. Some blood had oozed from the wound in his chest and lay in a long narrow crinkle, glistening like newly set plum jam. ‘What’ve we got then, George?’
‘As you see,’ said Doctor Bullard. ‘A blade artist.’
‘Neat.’ Barnaby took a close look then nodded in the direction of the howling which was dying into a series of tormented moans. ‘Can’t you give him something? It’s enough to drive a man to drink.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘As far as I can gather he’s already on quite complicated medication. Not wise to mix it. I’ve suggested calling their own doctor but they say they haven’t got one. Do it all themselves with herbs and moonshine.’
‘They must have. How does he get his stuff?’
‘Hillingdon at Uxbridge by all accounts.’ He got up, dusting his knees unnecessarily.
‘On the way to bed was he Doctor Bullard?’ asked Troy, winking at the body. ‘In his nightie.’
‘How long, George?’
‘An hour at the most. But this time you don’t need me to tell you. Apparently they were all here when it happened.’
‘What ... You mean they were playing about? This is some sort of accident?’
Troy recognised a trace of disappointment in his chief’s voice. Briefly Barnaby looked betrayed. Smiling to himself, the sergeant looked down at the dead man, noting the refined passionless features and tissuey skin. And get a load of that hair. He looked like something out of the ten commandments. You could just see him as Moses in the wilderness shouting: ‘Let my people go.’ Or was it ‘come’? Troy and the Bible were not close. Barnaby was now talking to Graham Arkwright, Scene of Crime. The sergeant tuned in.
‘... a lot to go on, I’m afraid. We found this behind that curtain over there.’ He indicated a small embrasure and held up a plastic bag containing a bright yellow glove. ‘Might get something on the knife for you, there’s a bit of thread attached. Know anything about this set-up, Tom?’ Barnaby shook his head.
‘My wife came here on a weaving course. Took me for ever to get rid of the scarf. I gave it to a jumble sale in the end. Turned up later in the window of Oxfam. She wouldn’t speak to me for a week.’
‘I’d call that a result myself,’ said Troy.
Barnaby took the glove and a second bag containing the knife and said, ‘I’ll drop these off later at Forensic - OK?’
A flash bulb flared and the two officers made their way towards the man standing in the doorway.
‘You first here, Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir. Arrived same time as the ambulance. On patrol with Policewoman Lynley. Notified the CID and stayed here with the body. She’s got the others downstairs. The big room far side of the hall.’
‘How did it strike you - the set-up?’
‘Well ... much as you’d expect really. They were all standing round looking gobsmacked. Apart from the idiot boy who was yowling his head off. I did ask if the dead man had been touched and they said no. I couldn’t get anything out of them after that.’
‘Right.’ Barnaby lumbered back downstairs. Troy, slim as a whip in his worn leather blouson and tight grey pants, running ahead opening two doors before finding the right one.
It was quite large with a ‘feathered’ ceiling made of wood, as were the panelled walls, so that one had the impression of being in a large carved box. There were a lot of shell-like polystyrene chairs on thin metal legs and an imperfectly cleaned blackboard. A place for lectures and seminars.
The communalists were all bunched together with the exception of one man who stood some distance away by the French windows. Bunched fists rammed into his pockets, he looked baffled and full of rage. There was a long scratch beaded with fresh blood down his left cheek. Barnaby thought he looked vaguely familiar.
Troy clocked the WPC (never see thirty again and dumpy with it), and then the rest. A weeping girl in a sari being comforted by a man in jeans. The wailing boy, his head in the lap of a bold-featured woman wearing blue. A dolly, dolly blonde and a harsh-faced pepper-and-salter in corduroy pants. Two fat pathetic-looking hippies with lumps of rock in the middle of their foreheads and a woman in a mad frock who looked only marginally more life-like than Stiffy upstairs. Plus a round little geezer with a beard the colour of tomato sauce.
Barnaby introduced himself and asked if any of them could tell him precisely what had happened. There was a long, long pause. Troy got the impression that the girl in the sari was struggling to control her sobs preparatory to speech, but then everyone (bar the man by the window) turned to the woman in blue. Still stroking the head of the crying youth, she gave a reluctant inclination of her head and made to stand but the boy clung so tightly to her knees that movement was impossible. When she spoke her voice was very tight. Low and calm but unnaturally so as if large reservoirs of emotion were being strenuously damned.
‘The Master has left us. He has entered his body of lights and is now at one with the over soul.’
Oh dear, oh dear, thought the chief inspector. It’s going to be one of those. Troy wondered what the chances were of slipping out for a quick drag before things got going seriously. He’d cut down to five a day, had smoked the first four before breakfast, and the need for a long cool inhalation was driving him up the wall. A greatly extended two minutes went by without anyone saying a dicky bird. Then the tart with saggy boobs started yammering whilst opening her arms wide, before flinging them across her chest as if to keep warm.
The sergeant regarded these flamboyant obsequies with irritation and dislike. You’d have thought they were a load of foreigners the way they were cracking on. Italians. Or jabbering Caribbeans. His hand reached into his pocket and closed wistfully over a lighter and packet of Chesterfields.
Barnaby quickly realised that questioning en masse would get him nowhere. All he had ascertained so far was the dead man’s name. It was like talking to captured prisoners of war. So he asked for a separate room and they were offered what appeared to be The Lodge’s office.
A workmanlike place - boxes of stationery and manila envelopes, filing cabinets, an old fashioned duplicator. On the wall a reincarnation advisory poster: Ever signed a cheque ‘William Shakespeare’ then wondered why? It was an internal room with no windows which made it especially satisfactory from a policeman’s point of view. The combination of an unknown interrogator and the complete disappearance of the outside world could mean you were already half way there.