‘Better check them all - you never know.’
The two men pulled out each volume, shaking them, leafing through. Barnaby, expecting to find evidence only of cultural vassalage to the East, was pleasantly surprised. Sufism, Buddhism, Druidic Lore, Myths and Legends, Runecraft, the Rosicrucian, a Jung primer. There was also the I Ching, books on UFOs, The Tao of Physics, and the Arkana Dictionary of New Perspectives. They were mostly paperbacks and all second-hand. Top whack three pounds seventy-five, the cheapest twenty-five pence.
‘He must have had some personal stuff, Chief?’ Troy riffled through the last volume and put it back carefully. ‘Most people have got at least a birth certificate, a few photographs. You can’t exist with just the clothes on your back and a few books.’
‘Monks do.’
‘Oh well ... monks.’ Troy’s tone was so deeply uncomprehending he might have been referring to men from Mars. Barnaby picked up The Meaning of Happiness. What man would not?
‘One here by a yogi, sir. Yogi Bear actually. Ten exciting ways with porridge.’
‘If all you can find to do is make daft jokes you can clear off and interview Mrs Gamelin.’
‘Right. Any idea where she is?’
‘You’ve got a tongue in your head. Ask. You know what we want.’
I know what I want. A nice long tasty puff. Troy opened the door and nearly fell over May who immediately offered to take him to Felicity. On the way she gave him many an encouraging glance, stopping at one point to suggest that he should refrain from cutting his hair so short as it served as an antenna for cosmic forces.
‘The Temple of Victory on Venus is open to our consciousness on the seventeenth of this month. Would you care to join us for a little healing ceremony?’ Troy looked exceedingly nonplussed. ‘You do need healing, you know. Very, very badly.’ Thinking his silence meant indecision, she continued, ‘And we treat the whole person here. You see when you’re ill outside you just get some drug on prescription. Or if you’re hospitalised surgeons pay attention to the organ in question and not the person behind it at all.’
Troy who had spent his entire adult life searching for a female with just such a talent for disinterested application, checked a hankering sigh. ‘Yeh ... well ... bit busy at the moment. New baby and that ...’
Leaving Troy on the landing, May entered Felicity’s room then re-emerged saying, ‘She’s awake but her force-field is still very low so would you -’
‘We’ll be fine, Miss Cuttle.’
Troy hardly recognised Felicity. She was sitting in bed propped up by pillows, straight hair tied back with some sort of plaited stuff, wearing a blue silk robe. The nicest thing about the following interrogation, to the sergeant’s mind, was that he smoked all the way through without asking her permission. This minuscule bit of point scoring (sans-culotte 5, aristo nil) was rather undermined by the fact that she hardly seemed to notice, let alone be at all put out.
In fact she didn’t seem much more compos mentis than yesterday. And hardly remembered where she was sitting on the dais or who was next to her. Troy wondered if she’d just blotted the murder out. Let’s face it, being in the same room while one was being committed was enough to unbalance anybody, and if you were ten pence short of a quid to start with ...
Questioned on her feelings regarding the McFadden Fund and its disposal, she became quite agitated and said she’d known nothing about it. On being told her husband certainly had, she added, ‘Trust him.’ Then, ‘He’d fight it with everything he’d got.’
‘It’s the girl’s inheritance, Mrs Gamelin. Up to her surely?’
‘Whose money it was would make no difference.’ She became extremely distressed and started tossing her head about. Troy decided to open the door. Before he had reached it she launched upon a startling breakdown of her husband’s physical and mental distinguishing features. Troy, full of admiration at this talent for picturesque abuse (the mildest phrase being ‘frog-faced illegitimate avaricious prick’), quite missed the fact that it was couched in the imperfect present. When Felicity, panting, rested once more upon the pillows he said primly, ‘I don’t think that’s very nice, Mrs Gamelin. He has just passed away after all.’
At this Felicity gave a loud cry and fell out of bed, hanging upside down in a sort of swoon. May came running in.
‘You stupid bugger, Gavin,’ said Barnaby on their return to the station.
‘Well, how was I to know? She was lying there looking like death warmed up. I assumed someone must have told her the good news by then. Sir Sinjhan Farty was round there at ten this morning.’ He glared sullenly at the floor. ‘I get blamed for everything round here.
Whipping boy I am. Should have been a plumber. Or a linesman like my dad. But even as these grumbling alternatives formed, Troy recognised they were dishonest. He had always wanted to be a policeman, loved being a policeman, would never wish to be anything else. But there were times when the carping, the paper work, the brown nosing and double-declutch handshakes, the soft attitudes of outsiders who never had to scrape up the mess, the political in-fighting, the need to button your lip if you wanted to get on and a thousand other day to day irritations all coalesced and threatened to overwhelm him.
Noting the tightened mouth and strawberry patches on Troy’s cheekbones, Barnaby recognised that he had been unfair. The assumption that Felicity had been told of her husband’s death was not an unreasonable one, although no doubt his sergeant had handled matters unskilfully. Troy’s modest level of academic achievement was a very sore spot and calling him stupid was striking where it hurt. Normally the chief inspector would have thought ‘tough’ and let him get on with it. Today he was feeling benevolent.
‘Mistake anyone could have made, Sergeant.’
‘Sir.’
That was all it took. Troy’s ego was back from the mender’s in no time. Already he was wondering if this new indulgence was encouragement enough to broach the subject of Talisa Leanne tactfully. He murmured a few words. Just an oblique reference, nothing specific. Receiving an absent-minded nod, he immediately leapt into hyperbolic speech delineating the baby’s charm, beauty, growth rate (height, teeth, hair, nails), speech development, teddy bear (handling and interrogation of), musical accomplishments (creative timpani-playing with saucepan lid) and artistic creativity. The latest drawing, Blue-tacked to the fridge, was the dead spit of her nanna’s poodle.
Barnaby easily tuned out. He was back in the bare-boned room thinking about Jim Carter. A man serious in his devotions and friendly in his ways. And about the fragment of overheard conversation.
‘What have you done? If they do a post mor -’
A post mortem? What else, two days after an unexplained death. So Craigie (perhaps) and at least one other had been afraid of such a procedure. And now Craigie was also dead. Were the two linked?
Speculation was fruitless at this stage. A waste of energy and a great spoiler of concentration. And God knows, thought Barnaby, I’ve enough on my plate to be going on with. The new information would have to go on the back burner and bide its time.
It did not have to bide long, for the very next day some information became available which threw a new and deeply disturbing light upon Jim Carter’s death.
Chapter 11
Breakfast chez Barnaby. Cully and Joyce were sharing the Independent. Tom was sawing at something very soft, very pink, wet, white and streaky.