Spittle coated his bristling chin as his expression of frustrated rage intensified. Fury flowed untrammelled across the narrow space between the two men. Barnaby sat quite still, a clot of saliva on his tie, unimpressed by the third-rate dialogue but very impressed indeed by the measure and quality of Gamelin’s ferocity. He had never had a boiler explode in his face but felt the time might well be nigh. Beneath his hand the table shivered.
Troy, who had been on the point of moving forward, stayed where he was and watched. They could have been a pair of great bull moose at the start of the season. Shoulders solid, foreheads low. Troy observed his chief’s impassive unflinching profile with a stirring of collaborative pride. He thought as he turned his attention to Gamelin, you’ve picked the wrong one there boyo.
Barnaby produced the glove. ‘We believe whoever used the knife wore this. You were seen hiding it.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Do you deny it, Mr Gamelin?’
‘No.’ He was drawing his rage back. Hoarding it now. Barnaby noticed a blue rim on the inside of the slack lower lip. Gamelin sat down breathing carefully, evenly. His hand rested briefly on his breast pocket. Came away.
‘Do you want something to drink, Mr Gamelin? A glass of water?’
‘No. Nothing.’ He sat quietly for a while then said, ‘The glove. After the bearded dwarf with the stupid name had gone to the phone for an ambulance and the others were staring at each other not knowing what to do, I reached for a handkerchief and the glove came out with it.’
‘Someone must have noticed that surely, sir?’ asked Troy.
‘I didn’t think so at the time. I was on my own you see - at the far end of the room. Persona non grata. Been like that all night. They wouldn’t even let me sit by her at dinner. Said they always kept to the same seat.’ He made to touch his cheek. ‘I put it straight back. It was plain what had happened. Whoever killed the man was planning to incriminate me. I went over to the window, waited until I thought I was unobserved, then stuck the glove behind the curtain.’
‘Are you left-handed?’
‘As it happens.’
‘I can see that may well have been as you describe, Mr Gamelin. But there’s also the matter of the dying man pointing you out ...’
To Barnaby’s surprise Gamelin made no attempt to deny or explain the fact. Nor did he attempt to bluster it away.
‘Yes. I can’t understand that. Plays perfectly into the murderer’s hands of course. Backs up the glove to perfection.’
‘Perhaps ...’ Barnaby tested the water, offered a way out. ‘If you were part of the group ...?’
‘No. It was me all right. I was standing a little away from the others. It’s funny but I thought at the time he was trying to tell me something.’ He shrugged, appearing slightly confused. ‘A bit thin but that’s it.’
Bloody thin, thought the chief inspector. Trouble was, Gamelin didn’t seem like a man to dissimulate. He just didn’t give a cuss what anyone thought or felt or said about him. A position of extreme strength or extreme arrogance according to your point of view. The chief inspector, a modest way along that path himself, naturally favoured the former. He asked if Guy had any ideas of his own on who might be guilty.
‘None at all. I don’t know enough about the set-up here. Quite honestly I wouldn’t have thought any of them had the guts to swat a fly.’ He was silent for a moment then said, ‘I’m ideal, aren’t I? The outsider bringing in all the nasty ways of the wicked world. All the hands here, whiter than white. Mine, redder than red. You’ve got to hand it to the cunning buggers.’ His throat released a short explosive clatter. ‘Praahh.’ Belatedly Barnaby recognised a laugh.
‘Do you believe then that you were invited specifically for that purpose?’
‘Of course not. I was asked down by Craigie himself. He’s hardly likely to collude in his own death. Unless ...’ he looked across at Barnaby, alert and interested, the boiling fury of a minute ago apparently quite forgotten, ‘unless my visit was suggested to him by someone else, which means this was all planned some time ago. Perhaps ... at the last minute ... he understood. That could be why he was pointing me out ... as a warning ...’
Troy had come across some smart examples of thinking on your feet but for sheer nattiness that took some beating. Guilty as hell and giving them a twinkle-toes runaround. He couldn’t understand why the chief was even pretending to go along with it. Both men were getting up.
Barnaby said, ‘I shall want to talk to you again, Mr Gamelin. Tomorrow.’
Gamelin did not reply. He walked to the door, his exit vastly more restrained than his arrival. His massive shoulders slumped and there was tiredness in his step. When the door had closed, Troy said, ‘Why didn’t you arrest him?’
Barnaby waited for the tag line. Open-and-shut case. Handed on a plate. Bang to rights. Short and curlies. In the matter of the well-worn apothegm, Troy stood alone.
‘We can pick him up in the morning. We’ll know more clearly where we are when we’ve finished the interviews. So far it’s pretty circumstantial.’
Behind the Boss’s back, Troy shook his head in disbelief. How much plainer could anything be? Obviously Gamelin was going to say the glove was planted. Who wouldn’t? Talk about snoringly obvious! But he’d got the motive, opportunity, both to take the knife and use it and, most damning of all, the murder victim had fingered him. The man was over a barrel. For a traitorous moment Troy wondered if he had been wrong about his chief’s imperviousness to the seductive power of wealth.
Barnaby was muttering now, apparently to himself. Troy listened, thinking he might not have heard aright. Something about always being sorry for Caliban. He remembered the earlier request for water and moved off.
By the time the sergeant returned, Arno was being questioned. He was sitting nervously hunched up, looking intently at the chief inspector. Encouraged to do a sketch, he had produced a host of stick figures - one flat on its back, toes turned up, hands crossed on breast and a ‘Smiley’ face. Barnaby having ascertained Arno’s position in the commune and noticed his extreme agitation, left the dark heart of the matter temporarily aside.
‘Tell me Mr Gibbs, what do you think will happen here now? To the Manor House for instance.’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Arno sounded deeply melancholic. He was ashamed to admit, even to himself, that once having absorbed the distressing fact that the Master was no more he had thought of little else but his own possible future. How would things fall out if the commune broke up? Who would look after Tim? And, most important of all, how on earth could he survive without the robust and serene presence of his dear love? Denied that radiant gaze that lit and sustained each awakening, and benevolently solaced the going down of the sun, his own life would hardly be worth the living.
‘You have no idea how the property is entailed?’
‘No. Actually I don’t think anyone has. Somehow it was never discussed.’
‘Did members have to buy into the organisation? Shares - that sort of thing?’
‘Not at all. We just pay our way. The Lodge made money from courses and workshops. We were planning to apply for charitable status actually. Become a trust but ...’ He gave a defeated shrug.
‘Did you know about Miss Gamelin’s bequest to the commune?’
‘No. I do now - they were just talking about it.’
‘And this evening ...’ Arno braced himself. ‘What do you think actually happened?’