‘You were heard.’
‘Oh dear. That’s bad.’
‘Were you looking for anything specific?’
Andrew flushed. He looked awkward and for the first time since the beginning of the interview, insincere. He blustered for a moment then shrugged, turning his hands palms-upward in a gesture of exculpation. ‘This is going to sound awfully mercenary so soon after he died but yes, I was looking for a Will. He’d sold his house when he moved to the Windhorse. Nothing grand. A three-bedroom terraced in what years ago was the non-posh bit of Islington. Now of course there’s no such thing. He got a hundred and eighty for it.’ Troy gave a low whistle. ‘I went to Barclays where he always banked, but they weren’t holding a Will and they’d tell me nothing about his affairs.’
‘Perhaps he put it into the commune?’ suggested Troy.
‘That’s not how it works. You don’t have to buy in. People just pay their way. And in any case it’s not something he would have done. He didn’t have to take me in and bring me up, but once he did our attachment to one another was total. I was his next of kin and I know he would have left the proceeds from the sale of the house to me. Certainly in preference to a bunch of strangers.’ His voice rose again on the final words then he paused. Breathing slowly in an obvious attempt to calm down, he reached for a third cigarette.
‘Perhaps you’d let me have your address at Earl’s Court, Mr Carter?’
Barnaby picked up his pen once more.
‘Twenty-eight Barkworth Gardens. Easy to remember because it’s my age.’
‘You say the morning of your uncle’s death you hung around waiting for a call till noon. Were you alone?’
‘Part of the time. Around half ten Noeleen - an Australian girl next door - asked if I’d like some coffee. We had it in her flat. The phone’s on the landing and she left the door open. Why do you ask?’
Barnaby capped this question by another. ‘What are you going to do now your cover’s blown?’
‘No reason why it should be.’ He fielded two disbelieving looks. ‘There’s no newspapers, radio or telly at the house you see.’
‘It’s all over the tabloids, Mr Carter,’ said Troy. ‘Maybe display boards, too. You don’t have to buy a paper. Just be in the blasting area.’
‘I don’t know about that. I was in the village this morning and I didn’t notice anything. Anyway - it’ll be a one-day splash won’t it? All over by tomorrow. I think I’ll keep my mouth shut and my fingers crossed.’
‘You’re going to have the fourth estate crawling out of your Tudor woodwork any minute now,’ said Barnaby, ‘what with the murder and Gamelin’s death. No point in telling them your name’s Christopher Wainwright.’
‘Hell. I suppose not. Then of course Trixie might have seen it. If she comes back -’
‘Comes back? What do you mean?’
‘She’s run off.’
‘What!’
‘We discovered it just before lunch.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you notify us?’
‘Oh there’s nothing sinister. She went of her own free will. Taken all her things.’
‘It’s not for you to decide what’s sinister and what isn’t!’ shouted Barnaby. ‘You were all instructed not to go anywhere without informing the police.’
‘It’s not as if she’s involved -’
‘She’s a witness in a murder inquiry, Mr Carter. And a possible suspect.’
‘A suspect ... but isn’t ... I thought ...’
‘The case is still open.’ He watched that sink in. Saw the implications take root and his visitor’s subsequent alarm.
‘I must get Suze away. I’ll tell her the truth. She’ll understand. Why I had to pretend, to lie. Won’t she?’ He sounded uncertain. ‘I’m not bothered what the others think.’
‘That’s a foolish and careless attitude, Mr Carter,’ said the chief inspector. ‘If your suspicions regarding the death of your uncle are correct - and I tell you frankly that I would not be at all surprised if they were - then someone at the Manor House has already killed two people. And they’ll not hang about, I assure you, if they feel a need to make it three.’
‘But why should anyone want to kill me? I haven’t discovered anything.’
‘Then it might be sensible to publicise the fact. And also,’ concluded Barnaby, ‘to watch your back.’
In the kitchen the Beavers were clearing up after lunch, Heather washing and wiping, Ken (hop, rest, ‘aah!’ hop) attempting to stack.
‘When I think of all that sprout timbale.’ She sounded quite peevish.
‘You haven’t thrown it away?’ Ken was naturally aghast. Throwing away was the irredeemable sin. Everything, even the contents of the vacuum bag, went on the compost heap - which at the Windhorse obtained to an almost iconic status. It was lovingly tended, dampened, activated by Garotta, forked sides to middle, gee’d up with a little lime and gently compressed by Arno’s wellies. Worms were thought specially beneficial and many was the lumbricus going modestly about its day-to-day affairs that would suddenly find itself tenderly whisked from terra firma and sent flying through the air to land, like as not, on a heap of rotting egg shells.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Heather now replied. ‘We can heat it up for supper.’ She tipped the Ecosudz down the sink. This, too, was not wasted. All water, (bar that from the loo), was diverted via an elaborate ganglia of tubes and hoses to the herb garden which remained ungratefully sodden-rooted and spotty-leaved. ‘Oh - do be careful. Here - let me ...’
Ken, balancing as best he could to put a stack of plates away, had almost toppled over. ‘Sorry ... a myriad thanks. A bit difficult getting earth-centred today.’
Pouring out the hyssop tea, Heather reintroduced a topic which had kept them awake and chatting the previous night well past sleepy-bye time. ‘Have you thought any more,’ she said, ‘about what we’re going to do if ...’
Ken shook his head. He drank a little tea, lifting and stretching his top lip in a rabbity fashion to keep his moustache dry. ‘Something might turn up today.’
There was no need to elaborate. They both knew that ‘something’ meant a Will.
When the matter was being discussed earlier, Ken and Heather had looked very higher-planeish and disapproving, being drawn in, they made clear, quite against their own selfless and delicate inclinations. But later, à deux, they had to admit that facts were facts no matter how the nut roast crumbled. And that uncertainty had entered their lives in a big way.
They were very contented at the Windhorse and had become deeply attached to the idea of sleeping beneath a solid roof, washing in hot water and staying fairly warm. Neither wished to rejoin the hipoisie of which their memories were keen. Both recalled sharply lurching about the country in leaky caravans and filthy buses. Hounded and moved on none too gently by the police, or hard-faced, granite-hearted landowners for whom the words ‘care and share’ might never have been invented. Wearily shifting from one smoke-filled bivouac to the next, crouching round a listless fire surrounded by snapping ribby dogs and whining children. Breaking ice on cattle troughs to make tea, shop-lifting - Ken had especially hated shop-lifting - and outbreaks of violence at dead of night if the local barbarians sussed their arrival. Heather had been woken once by the roar of motor cycles to find fiery rags burning on her pillow.
Neither of them had any idea of course, in those far-off Gandalfian days, that they harboured such a multiplicity of psychic gifts. Yet, now, here was Ken chosen to be a channel for one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, and Heather visiting Venus and being sent back with outstanding powers of healing.