‘Seriously, Tom,’ said Joyce, ‘are you OK?’ He looked so pale, so tightly folded in on himself, staring as if not knowing who she was. All three of them began to feel genuinely alarmed.
‘Yes.’ He took them in at last, noting their concern. ‘I’m ... sorry. Sorry. All right. Of course. Yes. I’m all right.’ He smiled at them all. ‘Sorry. I’m fine. Yes.’ ‘You’re not fine,’ said Joyce. ‘You’re burbling.’
‘We should go back to Mon Plaisir, darling. For our silver wedding. Let’s all go.’
‘I’ll get the ice cream.’ Joyce disappeared to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, ‘It’ll calm you down.’
She was looking through the hatch when the phone went. One harsh vibration and his chair was empty.
As the car sped through the thick night, the two men talked, getting it straight. Getting it right. Barnaby had immediately seen the truth of the matter when Troy rang his home with the new item of information. The insight that had come upon the chief inspector at the dinner table merely served to reinforce his theory.
Now, Troy said, ‘Peculiar.’ He signalled and slowed down, or at least accelerated less fiercely.
The Manor gates stood wide open and, apart from a single light on the ground floor, the place was dark. The Morris van was missing. As the police car entered the drive, the halogen warning lamp transformed the house into a moonlit dark-socketed shell.
They got out of the car and Barnaby knocked loudly at the front door, also ringing the bell. Receiving no reply to either summons, he tried the knob and went inside. Troy, raising an eyebrow at this casual reworking of the police rule book, was close behind.
Barnaby called, ‘Hullo?’ and the word was swallowed up in the silence. The house appeared quite empty.
‘I don’t like this.’ He moved to the bottom of the staircase and called again. ‘There are eight people living here so where the hell are they?’
‘It’s like that ship, Chief. Found floating.’
‘They couldn’t have all got into the van. And the VW’s still here.’
‘Listen!’ Troy threw his head back, staring up into the lantern. Barnaby joined him.
‘What? I can’t hear anything.’
‘A sort of ... scuffling ...’
Yes, he could hear it now. Directly overhead. As if something heavy was being dragged along. Then there was a bump and a loud cry.
‘On the roof!’ Troy ran out, Barnaby following more slowly. The two men retreated until they could get a good view of the top of the house. It seemed empty.
‘He must be on the other side. Behind the chimneys. I’ll get round -’
‘No - wait.’ Barnaby seized the sergeant’s arm. ‘Look - there ... in the shadows.’
A pair of dark forms locked together, wrestling, struggling, dangerously near the edge. One broke away and scrambled up a nearby sloping section, the other pursued. Barnaby saw an elongated gleam of reflected light.
‘Christ - he’s got a bloody iron bar -’
‘How do we get up?’
‘There’s a skylight so probably steps. You try the gallery. I’ll take downstairs.’
‘What about a ladder?’ Both men were running now.
‘Take too long ... (Pant, pant.) Don’t even know ... where to look ...’ Barnaby hung on to the porch. ‘You ... go on ...’
‘Right.’
Troy was half way across the hall when there was a strange sound above him. A gritty crackling and cracking as if a huge ball of cellophane was being violently scrunched. He glanced up and Barnaby saw his face change. Pinch into a concentration of shock and disbelief.
The sergeant jumped back just in time. A cloud of opalescent dust and fragments of brilliant glass tumbled down and, in the heart of this glittering stream, twisting and turning and crying out, the slender golden-haired figure of a man.
Everyone was in the kitchen. Heather had made some powerful tea in the twenty-cup brown enamel pot. Not all were drinking. Troy, leaning back against the draining board, shook his head as did the chief inspector. May, too, refused. Having bathed Andrew’s face, both her hands were now occupied in smearing comfrey ointment on his grazed cheekbones and bleeding lips. He was sipping tea and, between winces, gazing hard at Suhami as if willing her to show some concern for his condition.
May, Suhami and Arno had arrived back within seconds of Tim’s fall. Seeing the Orion, Suhami had parked practically in the porch and hurried into the house.
‘Tim ...’ She had cried out, flying across the hall, kneeling by his side, hands to her face in horror.
‘There’s nothing you can do, Miss.’ Troy had tried to raise her up. ‘The chief inspector’s ringing for an ambulance. Don’t touch that,’ he added sharply, as she reached out to the crowbar.
‘But - how did it happen?’ She looked at the gaping hole in the lantern. ‘Did he fall? What was he doing up there?’
That was when Andrew appeared, dragging himself along by the gallery rail. He was bleeding and his shirt and jeans were torn. The rasp of his breath, expelled forcefully in the form of shudders, seemed to fill the hall. He was mumbling something, the words becoming clearer as he approached.
‘Kill me ... tried to kill me ...’
Half an hour later Barnaby was repeating the phrase in the form of a question. He asked three times before getting any response.
‘Why? Because he’d discovered who I really was.’ The words, issuing through swollen lips, were not quite clear. There was a murmur of puzzled curiosity.
May, wiping her hands on a muslin cloth, said, ‘What do you mean, Christopher?’
‘My name isn’t Christopher. It’s Andrew Carter. Jim Carter was my uncle.’ The curiosity became consternation. The others followed Barnaby’s example and started to ask questions, and it took a good few minutes to quieten them down. Ken was the last to hush after asking what the point was in pretending to be somebody else.
Andrew explained about the letter, his uncle’s tablets, his own presence at the inquest, the whole thing. ‘I knew someone was on to me,’ he concluded, speaking to Barnaby. ‘I just didn’t know who it was. The photograph - the one I showed you - was hidden under some shirts. I found it had been moved. Shortly after this I was attacked. A lump of iron was pushed off the roof as I was leaving the house. I lied to the others about where the stone fell. It was not on the slab where May was standing at all, but the one behind.’
‘You said nothing of this to me.’
‘But I did, Chief Inspector!’ cried May. ‘I told you when I was first interviewed.’
‘I don’t think -’
‘I remember it distinctly. My accident? When the meteor fell?’
‘Ahhh. Yes.’
‘You told me to stick to the matter in hand. I didn’t like to persist. Thought there might be some sort of etiquette in these matters. You brushed me aside in your office as well.’
There’s no answer to that is there, my old darling? Troy took secret pleasure in his chief’s discomposure, whilst glossing over the fact that he would have done just the same himself.
‘So why did you keep quiet?’ The chief inspector emphasised the ‘you’ as he turned once more to Andrew.
‘I felt that if I appeared ignorant of the real reason for the attack, they’d think I wasn’t on to them and my position would be safer.’
‘Sounds like dangerously muddled thinking to me. And that needn’t have stopped you telling us.’
‘You’d have come round asking questions and given it all away.’
‘What evidence do you have that the whole thing wasn’t an accident?’