Looking round to check that she was unobserved, and still feeling vulgarly inquisitive, Janet knelt down and peered through the keyhole. All she could see was a section of Trixie’s unmade bed. Blushing, she scrambled up again.
When she got back to the kitchen she found that Christopher, who had slipped out to the village, had returned with a sinfully large chocolate cake ‘to jolly everyone up’.
‘But Heather’s done a tapioca roulade for pudding with a fig glaze,’ she pointed out.
‘Exactly!’
Janet laughed and was further cheered to discover that the Sossomix had absorbed the remaining water and was firm enough to shape and fry. She lit the gas under the spinach and suggested Christopher call the others.
He found Heather on the terrace in a royal-blue track suit. She was intoning, arms stretched high to connect with telluric energy lines.
‘I take movement into my very essence
I take runningness and jumpingness
I am run ... I am jump ...’
She started to bound about on the spot then, her huge bosom and bum quivering like giant jellies. About to call that lunch was ready, Christopher was halted by an explosion of lyricism.
‘Every little cell in my body is happee ...
Every little cell in my body is well ...’
Christopher was familiar with Heather’s paen to holistic positivism. She taught it to all her clients no matter how dreadworthy their disease. He placed himself in front of her and mouthed ‘food’.
She panted, ‘Kenny ... office ... go ...’ and pogoed off round the side of the house.
Ken was organising some posters for their next marriage workshop (On A Clear Day You Can See Each Other), resting his aleatory limb on the desk whilst the Gestetner chugged along.
‘Lunch is ready,’ panted his spouse, popping her head round the door.
‘About time,’ said Ken. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Sorry but things are sure to be a bit chaotic on a day like this.’ Heather wheezed in, picking up a poster. It was pale blue and showed two doves, one with long eyelashes wearing a pinny, the other stark-naked but for a fair smattering of white feathers. This one had its wing around the other one’s middle. Beneath it were Ken and Heather’s names and after Ken’s (in brackets) ‘Intuitive Diagnostician, Writer, Channeller’. Heather was down as ‘Healer, Writer, Priestess’. She said, ‘This should really bring them in. I hope it’ll still be on - I mean with all this upset.’
‘I resonate with that, Heth,’ said Ken, easing down his leg, ‘but hang loose. I’ve something to share.’
‘Oh - what is it?’ Heather sat with some difficulty, cross-legged on the carpet.
‘Well, you know my theory - never do one job when you could be doing three.’ Heather nodded. ‘So, while I was producing this lot, I also used my thought-energy web to tune into Hilarion about our future here.’
‘Brilliant. What did he say?’
‘Wouldn’t tell me, the old reprobate - oops!’ Ken put his head in his lap and covered it with his hands as if protecting himself from a rock fall. ‘Sorry, Hilarion ...’ he called through his fingers. ‘Only joking.’ He sat up then and continued. ‘But he did zero in with some info of his own. Nothing less than a complete world-overview of the cosmic and global situation. There was a special reference to the holes in the ozone layer and - talk about a paradigm shift - they are nothing whatsoever to worry about.’
‘What? I can’t believe ...’ Hope and incredulity fought it out in Heather’s shining face.
‘It’s true. Comes directly from the Original Silent Fourfold Column. You know how the waters break when a baby’s born? Well, this is precisely the same process. As we all know, there’s a great spiritual outpouring from the angelic realms at this particular moment in time. Now, how can this get through if apertures are not made in the heavens?’
His wife clapped her hands in wonder. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘Talk about profound. The old fox.’
‘So all this changing aerosols and fridges and things -’
‘Complete waste of time.’
Heather galumphed to her feet. ‘We must share this with the others.’
‘And then with the world.’
Crossing the hall towards the dining room, Ken checked the ‘Feeling Guilty’ bowl as he always did when passing. There was no money in it today, but he did find something else. A key with a tag on reading ‘25’. The key to Trixie’s room.
The afternoon was hot. Both the windows in Barnaby’s office were open but there was little breeze. It was Policewoman Brierley’s twenty-second and someone had had the wit to lob in ice and a huge bag of lemons as well as assorted cakes and pastries. The chief inspector had a frosted glass of tart, freshly made lemonade in one hand and was eating his doughnut in a very circumspect manner, trying to keep the filling off his shirt and off the mass of material on his desk, which included the recently delivered scenes-of-crime report.
A chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ wafted through the half-open door and he could see his sergeant perched on Audrey’s desk. Troy was holding some computer sheets and singing away, his eyes on her black-stockinged knees.
She’d come on a lot in the last three years had little Audrey, thought Barnaby. Earlier on she’d been really shy, not knowing how to handle flirtatious come-ons or chauvinistic put-downs, which in any case often came joined at the hip, like unkind Siamese twins. The girls that stuck it toughened up. As Barnaby watched, catching scarlet confectioner’s jelly just in time, Troy leaned forward with a predatory leer, murmuring something, winking. Audrey winked and murmured back. There was an explosion of laughter and the sergeant walked away.
‘She used to be really sweet, that girl,’ he said angrily, flourishing the print-out. ‘Dead feminine - know what I mean?’
‘I think she’s quite sweet now, actually.’
‘Pay them a compliment - jump down your throat.’
The compliment had gone as follows. Troy: ‘I’ll take you for a drink to celebrate. Somewhere really smart. How about that snug little place on the river? You’ll have a good time. They don’t call me up-and-coming for nothing.’ Audrey: ‘Use it to stir your tea, Gavin.’
‘Women who are coarse just show themselves up - don’t you think, Chief?’
Barnaby, reading, said: ‘No Craigie on these.’
Troy made an effort to become unchagrined. ‘I checked on similar names as well. There’s a Brian Craig in there. Insurance fraud. Died in Broadmoor.’
‘Must have been some territory.’ Barnaby rarely made a joke. This one died on its feet.
‘There’s more to come. I’m waiting on a Cranleigh and Crawshaw.’ He sounded very bright and positive. ‘I’m convinced Gamelin was right. Feel it in my bones.’
Troy was always feeling things in his bones. They were about as reliable as a Saint Bernard that had been at the brandy.
‘Anything in scenes-of-crime, sir?’
‘Not a lot.’
Troy read the two closely typed sheets. Nothing on the glove - which was to be expected. And nothing on anything else much either. A magnified picture of the fibrous thread which had been caught up on the knife.
‘Bit of a pisser, that,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Doesn’t look as if it came off anyone’s gear. Mind you - not everyone was wearing the sort of clothes that could conceal it. May Cuttle’s dress had long floaty sleeves but she’s out. Could have passed it to somebody though. Hey - maybe she slipped it to Wainwright. Because there’s no way he could have brought it in himself. Tight jeans, sneakers, short-sleeved shirt.’