‘He didn’t go near the dais either.’
‘So who’s left? The dykey woman wore trousers - she could’ve brought it in. The blonde might have found it difficult. Gibbs could have had it up his jumper. Gamelin and the Beavers could have hidden it and that lad with one oar out of the water. He wore a baggy sweater. Or Gamelin’s wife - she could have had a whole canteen of cutlery in that dress. Same goes for her daughter in the sari.’
Troy’s mouth pursed with a moue of distaste. If there was one thing that turned him up, it was white women dressing like blacks. ‘If that girl was mine,’ he muttered, ‘I’d drag her home, wash that red muck off under the tap and give her a good clout.’
‘But people are not “ours”, Sergeant. They’re not cars or washing machines. You’ve forgotten someone.’
‘No I haven’t.’ Barnaby pointed to the wall sketch. ‘Craigie?’ Troy laughed in disbelief. ‘Well, he’s not going to give the murderer a hand by smuggling a knife in, is he?’
‘He was there. We shouldn’t exclude him. What do we keep, Troy?’
‘An open mind, sir,’ sighed Troy, thinking some people’s minds had been kept so open their brains had fallen out.
‘Have a look and see if there’s any more of those doughnuts.’
Janet was searching Trixie’s room. She knew there was no point. She had searched it twice already, first in a whirling hawk-eyed frenzy of disbelief then more slowly, systematically turning out every drawer. She looked beneath the mattress and rugs and through pages of books and, once, in a moment of barmy desperation, pulled out the basket in the fire grate. But she found no clue as to where Trixie might have fled.
What Janet was really looking for, of course, was a letter. But there was no trace of any such thing. Not even thrown-way scraps from which an address might be pieced together. And there was nothing on file in the office either. Trixie’s first inquiry was by telephone, and this had been followed by a weekend visit which had extended itself indefinitely once bursary help was found to be available.
Janet was almost as distressed by the intensity of her misery as by the misery itself. How had she let herself get into such a state? The progress had been so insidious. At first she hadn’t even liked Trixie. The girl had struck her as shallow and silly, and they’d had nothing whatsoever in common. Then, gradually, she had started to admire and eventually envy the younger girl’s soubrettish character. Her assurance and smart backchat. Born into a tradition of polite reticence, Janet frequently found herself either tongue-tied or constrained by good manners from speaking her mind.
She had realised quite early on that Trixie was not a true seeker. Was not in fact very interested at all in the higher realm. She had attended meditation, had interviews with the Master and slipped a few genuflective remarks into various semi-religious discussions but Janet knew her heart wasn’t in it. It struck her once that Trixie only went this far to be sure of keeping her foot in the door. Janet had often longed to ask why she was at the Windhorse in the first place but had never dared. Trixie always said that if there was one thing she could not stand it was nosiness.
Now, sitting at the dressing table, the roses still blushing in their bowl and feeling quite ill with loss and longing, Janet opened the top drawer for the umpteenth time and regarded all that was left of Trixie. A half-full packet of Tampax, a pink lacy angora jumper smelling under the arms and some ‘airport’ novels, ill-written and virtually (Janet had dipped into a couple) pornographic, although any virtue seemed to have been vanquished by page seven.
Janet was sure that Trixie had disappeared because she was afraid. And that it was something to do with Guy Gamelin. Even in death that monstrous man exuded the power to harm. Janet pictured Trixie alone and frightened, running, running. Had she any money? Surely she wouldn’t try to hitch a lift. Not after all the terrible stories one heard. She must have left sometime between half eleven and twelve. Perhaps creeping through the hall with her blue-wheeled suitcase while Janet was just a few feet away in the kitchen. Oh God!
She sprang up, her arms wrapped straight-jacket-tight across her chest. Now more than any other was the time when Trixie would need her friendship. And Janet had so much to give. She could feel it lying, a great heavy lump, where her heart should be. She seemed to have been carrying it all her life and it grew heavier every day.
She caught sight of herself in the glass. Her hair was wild, skin stretched tight over beaky nose. She faced the thought that Trixie might never return and a terrible sensation of time passing snatched at her throat. A concentrated sense of loss. The bleakness of it almost brought her to her knees. She felt she was facing a long, unendurable twilight without ever having known the glory of the day.
She’d read once that the intensity of a really powerful emotion could kill recollection. Janet felt she could handle such oblivion. Loving Trixie in a poignant cauterised way, like a misplaced memory. There was something clean and austere about this conclusion. The absolute certainty of naught for your comfort was almost a comfort in itself. She would walk alone bearing in mind the harsh and deeply unsatisfactory epigram that the only sure way to get what you want in life is to want what you get.
‘Settle’ was the term her mother would have used. ‘I’ll settle for that’ Janet remembered her saying about a length of fabric or a piece of meat or a knitting pattern. Janet had always understood the phrase to mean ‘It’s not what I want but it’s better than nothing.’
But no sooner had Janet decided to settle for nothing than an agonised longing for human contact, for a flicker of warmth to light the way, devoured her, and she buried her face in the scented roses and wept.
Christopher and Suhami were in the study. She gazing out of the window, he sitting at the barley-twist one-legged table at which Barnaby had conducted the interviews. There was a small pigskin case by Christopher’s feet and on the table a large unsealed brown envelope. Three days’ neglect of the room had occasioned a layer of dust over everything.
The couple were talking about death. Suhami in the driven, irritable manner of one who is drawn to reinvestigate an unhealed wound. Christopher, who was also getting irritable, with great reluctance.
‘It’s impossible, isn’t it?’ she was saying, ‘to imagine what it’s like to be dead. You picture yourself looking down at your funeral. People weeping, all the flowers. But you have to be alive to do the imagining.’
‘I suppose. Can’t we talk about something else?’ When she did not reply he hefted the case on to a hard-backed chair. ‘We could get your father’s things sorted.’
‘What is there to sort? It’s only clothes. Next time someone goes into Causton they can take them to a charity shop.’
‘There’s this envelope as well.’
‘I know, I know. I signed for them didn’t I?’
‘Calm down.’ He shook out the contents. Guy’s wallet, his keys, handkerchief, cigar-cutter and lighter. An empty brown glass bottle. A small card, crumpled as if someone had clutched it tight, holding an engraved message from Ian and Fiona (Props). Christopher turned the card over. An elf in curly toed shoes pointed a little wand at a line of italicised prose: Our true intent is all for your delight. Wm Shakespeare. There was something else in the envelope. Right at the bottom.
Christopher slid in his hand and removed the watch. It lay on his palm, dazzlingly splendid; nothing but jewels and facets of light. He gasped (he couldn’t help it) and knew she had turned round. When he looked up, Suhami was watching him, the expression on her face unreadable. He lay the watch down and it blazed like a star against the dusty rose-brown wood. When he felt that he could speak without avarice shining through he said, ‘What do you think? Should we give these things to your mother?’