"We have found some used condoms in the area around the ice house," McLoughlin said, abruptly changing the subject. "Have you any idea who would have left them there?"
Anne grinned. "Well, it wasn't me, Sergeant. I don't use them."
He showed his irritation. "Have you had intercourse there with someone who does, Miss Cattrell?"
"What, with a man?" She gave her throaty chuckle. "Is that a very sensible question to ask a lesbian?"
He gripped his knees tightly with trembling fingers as a sudden black rage hammered in his head. He felt terrible, his eyes smarting from lack of sleep, his mouth tasting foul. What a loathsome bloody bitch she was, he thought. He took a few shallow breaths and eased his hands on to the desk. They shook with a life of their own. "Have you?" he asked again.
She watched him closely. "No, I haven't," she answered calmly. "Nor, as far as I know, has anyone else in the house." She leaned forward and tapped the end of her cigarette against the side of an ashtray. He moved his hands to his lap.
"Perhaps you could clear up something that puzzles both Chief Inspector Walsh and myself," he continued. "We understand you and Mrs. Goode have been living here for several years. How is it neither of you has seen inside the ice house?"
"In the same way that most Londoners have never seen inside the Tower. One doesn't tend to explore things on one's own doorstep."
"Did you know of its existence?"
"I suppose so." She thought for a moment. "I must have done. I don't remember being surprised at Fred mentioning it."
"Did you know where it was?"
"No."
"What did you think the hillock was?"
"I can only recall walking right round these gardens once and that was when I first came here. I expect I thought the hillock was a hillock."
McLoughlin didn't believe her. "Don't you go for walks? With the dogs, with your friends?"
She turned her cigarette in her fingers. "Do I look like someone who takes exercise, Sergeant?"
He studied her briefly. "As a matter of fact you do. You're very slim."
"I eat very little, drink only neat spirits and smoke like a chimney. It does wonders for the figure but leaves me gasping for breath halfway up the stairs."
"Don't you help with the gardening?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I'd be a liability. I couldn't tell the difference between a rose-bay willow-herb and a Michaelmas daisy. In any case, when would I find the time? I'm a professional woman. I work all day. We leave the gardening arrangements to Phoebe, that's her province."
He thought of the pot plants in her room. Was she lying again? But why lie about gardening, for Christ's sake? His hand wandered to the uneven stubble on his jaw, touching, testing, fingering. Without warning, a shutter of panic snapped shut in his brain, blanking his memory. Had he shaved? Where had he slept? Had he had breakfast? His eyes glazed and he looked straight through Anne into a darkness beyond her, as of she was in a dimension outside his narrow line of vision.
Her voice was remote. "Are you all right?"
The shutter opened again and left him with the nausea of relief. "Why are you living here, Miss Cattrell?"
"Probably for exactly the same reason you're living in your house. It's as nice a roof over my head as I could find."
"That's hardly an answer. How do you square Streech Grange and its two servants with your conscience? Isn't it rather too-privileged for your taste?" His voice grated with derision.
Anne stubbed out her cigarette. "I simply can't answer that question. It's based on so many false premises that it's entirely hypothetical. Nor, frankly, do I see its relevance."
"Who suggested you come here? Mrs. Maybury?"
"No one. It was my suggestion."
"Why?"
"Because," she repeated patiently, "I thought it would be a nice place to live."
"That's crap," he said angrily.
She smiled. "You're forgetting the sort of woman I am, Sergeant. I have to take my pleasures where I find them. Phoebe wouldn't-couldn't-leave this house to come to London, so I had to come here. It's very simple really."
There was a long silence. "Pleasures don't last," he said softly. The shutter flickered horribly in his brain. " 'Pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts forever.' " He spoke the words to himself. There was another silence. "In your case, Miss Cattrell, the price of pleasure would seem to be hypocrisy. That's a high price to pay. Was Mrs. Maybury worth it?"
If he'd turned a knife in her gut, he couldn't have hurt her more. She took refuge in anger. "Let me give you a brief resume of what led up to this line of questioning. Someone, probably Walsh, told you: she's a feminist, a lefty, a member of CND, an ex-Commie, and God knows what other rubbish besides. And you, exulting in your superiority because you're male and heterosexual, leapt at the chance of having a go at me on matters of principle. You're not interested in truth, McLoughlin. The only issue here is whether you and your inflated ego can make a dent in mine and, Jesus," she spat at him, "you're hardly original in that."
He, too, leant forward so that they were facing each other across the desk. "Who are Fred and Molly Phillips?" She was unprepared, as he had known she would be, and she couldn't hide the flash of concern in her eyes. She sat back in her chair and reached for another cigarette. "They work for Phoebe as housekeeper and gardener."
"Mrs. Goode told us you arranged their employment here. How did you find them?"
"I was introduced to them."
"Through your work, through your political contacts? Perhaps penal reform is one of your interests?"
Damn him to hell and back, she thought, he wasn't a complete clod after all. "I'm on the committee of a London-based group for the rehabilitation of ex-prisoners. I met them through that."
She expected triumph and gave him reluctant credit when he didn't show it. "Have they always been called Phillips?"
"No."
"What was their surname?"
"I think you should ask them that."
He passed a weary hand across his face. "Well, of course, I can, Miss Cattrell, and that will simply drag out the agony for everybody. We will find out one way or the other."
She looked out of the window, over his shoulder, to where Phoebe was pinching the dead-heads off the roses bordering the drive. She had lost her tension of the previous evening and squatted contentedly in the sun, tongues of flame curling in her shining hair, nimble fingers snapping through the flower stems. Benson sat hotly beside her, Hedges lay panting in the shade of a dwarf rhododendron. The sun's heat, still far from its peak, shimmered above the warm gravel.
" Jefferson," said Anne.
The Sergeant made the connection immediately. "Five years each for the murder of their lodger, Ian Donaghue."
Anne nodded. "Do you know why the sentences were so lenient?"
"Yes, I do. Donaghue buggered and killed their twelve-year-old son. They found him before the police did and hanged him."
She nodded.
"Do you approve of personal vengeance, Miss Cattrell?"
"I sympathise with it."
He smiled suddenly and for a brief moment she thought he looked quite human. "Then at last we've found something we can agree on." He tapped his pencil on the desk. "How well do the Phillipses get on with Mrs. Maybury?"
"Extremely well." Surprisingly, she giggled. "Fred treats her like royalty and Molly treats her like muck. It's a stunning combination."
"I expect they're grateful to her."
"The reverse. I'd say Phoebe is more grateful to them."
"Why? She's given them a new home and employment."
"You see the Grange as it is now but when I moved in nine years ago, Phoebe had been managing on her own for a year. She was shunned by everybody. No one from the village or even Silverborne would work for her. She had to do the gardening, the housework and house maintenance herself and the place was like a tip." A stone lurched sickeningly in her mind as memories struggled to get out. It was the stench of urine, she thought. Everywhere. On the walls, the carpets, the curtains. She would never forget the terrible stench of urine. "Fred and Molly's arrival a couple of months after us changed her life."