"I did, sir," said one of Jones's search party. "Fred Phillips takes size ten and his feet are about as broad as they are long. He took off his boots to show me." He chuckled at the memory. "He's not just built like an elephant, he's got feet to match." He caught Walsh's eye and peered hurriedly at the shoes in the bag. He shook his head. "No chance. I doubt he'd even get those over his big toes. Jonathan Maybury takes size nine." He looked up. "Incidentally, he and Mrs. Goode's daughter have arrived, sir. They're with their mothers now."
Walsh murmured acknowledgement as he jotted down the sizes. "OK, Robinson, what have you got?"
The DS crammed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and fished out his pad. "Promotion," he muttered under his breath to the man next to him.
"What was that?" demanded Walsh coldly.
"Sorry, sir, wind," replied Robinson, thumbing through his pages. "I hit upon a mine of information, sir. I'll put it all in my report, but the important bits are these: one, these woods are used regularly by local courting couples, have been for years apparently; two, David Maybury had a hundred copies of a booklet printed, showing a map of the grounds and giving a potted history of the place." He glanced at Walsh. "He wanted to attract tourists," he explained, "and gave the booklets away to anyone in the village who would pass them on."
"Damn," said the Chief Inspector with feeling. "Have you got a copy?"
"Not yet. It was the landlord at the pub who told me about it and he's looking for his copies now. If he finds them, he'll give me a ring."
"Anything else?"
"Do me a favour, sir, I've hardly started," said Nick Robinson plaintively. "I asked about strangers. Several people remembered seeing an old tramp hanging around the village about two, three months ago but I couldn't get a definite date on him. He had money because he bought a couple of drinks in the pub."
"I've a date, sir," Constable Williams interrupted eagerly. "He knocked at two houses on the council estate asking for food and money. The first was an old lady called Mrs. Hogarth who gave him a sandwich; the second was a Mrs. Fowler who sent him off with a flea in his ear because he came in the middle of her son's birthday party. The twenty-seventh of May,'* he finished triumphantly. "I've got a good description, too. He shouldn't be too hard to find. Old brown trilby, green jacket and, this is the clincher, bright pink trousers."
Walsh was doubtful. "There's probably no connection. Tramps are two a penny round here in the summer. They follow the sun and the scenic routes just like the tourists. Any more?"
DS Robinson caught a sardonic gleam in McLoughlin's eye which told him what he'd already guessed, that the old man was in another of his moods. God rot his soul, he thought. It was like working with a yo-yo, up one minute, down the next. Any other time and all his efforts of the morning would have earned him a pat on the back. As things stood now, he'd be lucky if he got away with a kick in the pants.
He returned to his notebook. "I followed a lead I was given and spoke to one of the condom users," he went on. "He comes up here with his girlfriend when it's warm enough, usually around eleven o'clock-"
"Name," snapped Walsh.
"Sorry, sir. Promised I wouldn't reveal his name, not unless it became absolutely necessary for a prosecution and, even then, not without his permission." In Sergeant Robinson's view, Paddy Clarke's threat to string him up by the balls had been no idle one. The big man had offered no reasons for his promiscuity but Robinson had guessed them when Mrs. Clarke returned unexpectedly as he was leaving. She was big, meaty and domineering with a brittle smile and hard eyes. A Gorgon who wore the trousers. God knows, Robinson had thought, no one could blame Paddy for wanting something soft, sweet and compliant to cuddle from time to time.
"Go on," said Walsh.
"I asked him if he'd seen anything unusual up here in the last six months. Seen, no, he said, but heard, yes. According to him it's normally pretty quiet, the odd owl or nightjar, dogs barking in the distance, that sort of thing." He consulted his notebook. "On two occasions in June, during the first two weeks, he reckons, he and his girlfriend were-and I'm quoting him, sir-'scared shitless by the most god-awful racket you've ever heard. Like souls crying out in hell.' The first time it happened, his girlfriend was so frightened she took to her heels and ran. He followed pretty sharpish and when they reached the road, she told him she'd left her knickers behind."
A muted snigger rippled round the seated men like a soft breeze through the grass. Even Walsh smiled. "What was it, did they know?"
"They sussed it the second time. They came up a week later and it happened again but to a much lesser degree. This time, my man hung on to his girl and made her listen. It was cats yowling and spitting, either at each other or something else-he thought he could hear growling as well. He couldn't say where it was coming from, but it was fairly close." He looked at Walsh. "They've been up several times since but it's not happened again."
McLoughlin stirred himself. "The colony of feral cats at the farm," he said, "fighting over the body. If that's right and the date's accurate it gives us the beginnings of a timescale. Our victim was murdered during or before the first week in June."
"How sure is your man of his dates?" Walsh asked Robinson.
"Pretty sure. He's going to check with the girlfriend but he remembers it being during that spell of very hot weather at the beginning of June, said the ground was dry as a bone both times so he didn't need to take anything for them to lie on."
Walsh made some notes on his pad. "Is that it?"
"I've had some conflicting reports about the three women up here. Almost everyone agrees they're lesbians and that they try to seduce the village girls into lesbian orgies. But two of them-in my view, sir, the two most sensible-said it was malicious rubbish. One's an old lady in her seventies or eighties who knows them pretty well, the other's my informant. He said that Anne Cattrell's had so many lovers she could give Fiona Richmond lessons on sex." He took a cigarette out and lit it, glancing through the smoke at McLoughlin. "If it's true, sir, it might give us another angle. Crime passionnel, or whatever the Frogs call it. It strikes me she's gone out of her way to make us think she's only interested in women. Why? Could be because she's done away with a jealous lover and doesn't want us to make the connection."
"Your informant's talking crap," McLoughlin said bluntly. "Everyone knows they're lesbians. Hell, I've heard more old jokes about that than I can remember." Jack Booth had had a fund of them. "It's hardly something new that Miss Cattrell's invented for our benefit. And if it's not true, why do they pretend it is? What on earth do they gain by it?"
Walsh was stuffing tobacco into his pipe. "Your problem, Andy, is that you generalise too much," he said acidly. "The fact that everyone knows something doesn't make it true. Everyone knew my brother was a tight-fisted bastard until he died and we discovered he'd been paying out two hundred quid a year for fifteen years to educate some black kids in Africa." He nodded approvingly at Robinson. "You may have something, Nick, Personally, I couldn't give a monkey's what their sexual habits are and, from what I've seen of them, they couldn't give a monkey's what people say or think about them. Which is why"-he glared at McLoughlin-"they wouldn't trouble to deny or confirm anything. But," he continued thoughtfully, lighting his pipe, "I am interested in the fact that Anne Cattrell's been shoving lesbianism down our throats since we got here. What's her motive?" He fell silent.
DS Robinson waited a moment. "Let me have a go at her, sir. A new face, she might open up. No harm in trying."
"I'll think about it. Has anyone else got anything?"
A constable raised a hand. "Two people I spoke to reported hearing a woman sobbing one night, sir, but they couldn't remember how long ago." "Two people in the same house?"