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Her lips thinned to an angry slit. "Is that where those awful women live?" she spat. Walsh nodded. "Daniel would sooner walk into the lion's den"-she fingered her cross-"than be contaminated by their sin." She kissed the cross and started to undo the buttons of her dress.

"Fair enough," said Walsh with some embarrassment. "We'll let ourselves out."

Andy McLoughlin paused in the living-room doorway and looked back at her. "We're going to ask the Vicar to pop round and see you, Mrs. Thompson. It might do you good to have a chat with him."

The Vicar listened to the expression of police concern with ill-disguised panic. "Frankly, Inspector, there's nothing I can do. Believe me, our little community has bent over backwards to assist poor Mrs. Thompson. We've enlisted the aid of her doctor and a social worker, but they're powerless to act unless she herself requests psychiatric help. She's not mad, you see, nor, in the accepted sense, even depressed. In fact, outwardly, she's coping magnificently." He had a pronounced Adam's apple which bobbed up and down as he spoke. "It's only when people visit her, particularly men, that she acts-er-strangely. The doctor's sure it's only a matter of time before she snaps out of it." He wrung his hands. "The truth is neither he nor I like to go there any more. She seems to have developed sex and religious mania. I'll send my wife, though to be honest her last encounter with Mrs. Thompson was less than happy, some accusation about seeing me in church with only my socks and shoes on." The Adam's apple crowded nervously towards his chin. "Poor woman. Such a tragedy for her. Leave it with me, Inspector. I'm sure it's only a matter of time, of coming to terms with Daniel's disappearance. There must be a text to deal with it. Leave it with me."

Detective Sergeant Robinson rang Anne's doorbell and waited. The door was slightly ajar and a voice called: "Come in," from a distance. He went down the corridor to the room at the end. Anne was sitting at her desk, a pencil tucked behind her ear, one booted foot propped on an open drawer and tapping time to "Jumping Jack Flash" playing quietly from her stereo. She looked up and waved him to an empty chair. "I'm Anne Cattrell," she said, taking the pencil from behind her ear and marking a correction on a page of typed paper. "Vaginal Orgasm-Fact or Fiction," had straggled its way towards some sort of climax on five sheets of A4.

He sat down. "Detective Sergeant Robinson," he introduced himself.

She smiled. "What can I do for you?"

Hell, he thought, she's OK-more than OK. With her cap of dark hair and wide-spaced eyes, she reminded him of Audrey Hepburn. From the way McLoughlin had talked the previous evening, he'd been expecting a real dog. "It's not much," he said, "just something that doesn't square."

"Fire away. Does the music worry you?"

"No. One of my favourites," he said truthfully. "It's like this, Miss Cattrell, both you and the majority of people in Streech village have made out that you and your friends are lesbians." He paused.

"Go on."

"Yet when I mentioned it to Mr. Clarke at the pub this morning, he roared with laughter and said, though not in quite these words, that you were very definitely heterosexual."

"What were his actual words?" she asked curiously. He noticed the full ashtray on her desk. "Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Cattrell?"

She offered him one of hers. "Be my guest." She watched him light the cigarette in silence.

"He said you've had more men that I've had hot dinners," he said in a rush.

She chuckled. "Yes, that well-worn cliche sounds like Paddy. So, you want to know if I'm a lesbian, and if I'm not why I've given the impression that I am." He could almost hear her mind clicking. "Why would a woman give people reason to despise her unless it's to put them off the track of something else?" She levelled her pencil at him. "You think I've murdered one of my lovers and left him to rot in the ice house." Her hands were as small and delicate as a child's.

"No," he lied gamely. "To be honest, it's not very important one way or the other, it's just something that's puzzled us. Also," he went on, taking a shot in the dark, "I took to Mr. Clarke more than any of the others I spoke to, and I can't really believe he's the one who's wrong."

"Clever of you," said Anne appreciatively. "In matters unconnected with sex, Paddy has more sense in his little finger than the whole of Streech put together."

"Well?" he asked.

"Was his wife there when you spoke to him?"

He shook his head. "We spoke entirely in confidence though what he said about you was intended to be passed on. He said he was fed up with the b-er-rubbish that was spoken about the three of you."

"Bullshit?" she supplied helpfully.

"Yes." He grinned boyishly. "Actually, I met his wife as I was leaving. She scared the hell out of me."

Anne lit a cigarette. "She was a nun once and incredibly pretty. She met Paddy in church and he swept her off her feet and persuaded her to break her vows. She's never forgiven him for it. As she gets older, her fall from grace assumes larger and larger proportions. She thinks it's God's punishment that she hasn't any children." She was amused by his astonishment.

"You're having me on?" He couldn't believe Mrs. Clarke had ever been pretty.

Her dark eyes sparkled. "God's truth, m'lud." She blew a smoke ring into the air. "Fifteen years ago she set Paddy on fire. The spark's still there. It flashes out occasionally when she forgets herself, though Paddy can't see it. He's accepted the surface image and forgotten that nine-tenths of her lies hidden."

"You could say that about anyone," Robinson pointed out.

"You could indeed."

"Jumping Jack Flash" had given way to "Mother's Little Helper." Her foot tapped out a new rhythm.

He waited for a moment but she didn't go on. "Was Mr. Clarke's information about you correct, Miss Cattrell?"

"Hopelessly wrong on numbers unless your mother's deprived you of hot dinners, but the general drift's accurate."

"So why did you tell Sergeant McLoughlin you were a lesbian?"

She made another pencilled note on the page. "I didn't," she said, without looking up. "He heard what he wanted to hear."

"He's not a bad sort," he said lamely, wondering why he felt a need to defend McLoughlin. "He's been going through a rough patch lately."

She raised her eyes. "Is he a friend of yours?"

Robinson shrugged. "I suppose so. He's done me some favours, stood by me a couple of times. We have the odd drink together."

Anne found his answer depressing. Who listened, she wondered, when a man needed to talk? Women had friends; men, it seemed, had drinking companions. "Whatever I said wouldn't have made any difference," she told the Sergeant. "It doesn't matter twopence to this case whether we bonk women every night or men every night. Or if," she waved her pencil at her bookcase, "we go to bed for the simple pleasures of reading ourselves to sleep. When you've solved your murder, you'll see I'm right." She bent to her corrections once more.

12

Chief Inspector Walsh gathered his men about him on the drive in front of the Grange and divided them into four groups. Three to search the properties inside, and a fourth to comb the outhouses behind the kitchen, the garage block, the greenhouses and the cellars. Robinson had come out of the house to join them.

"What are we looking for, sir?" asked one man.

Walsh handed some typed sheets round the groups. "Read these pointers, then use your common sense. If anyone here is connected with this murder, they are not going to make you a free gift of their involvement so keep your wits about you and your eyes open. The important facts to remember are these; one, our man died approximately ten weeks ago; two, he was stabbed; three, his clothes and dentures were removed; four, and most importantly, it would help if we knew who the hell he was. David Maybury and Daniel Thompson seem the most likely contenders and there's a brief description of both of them on those sheets." He paused to let the men read the descriptions. "You will notice that in terms of height, colouring and shoe size, the two are not dissimilar, but bear in mind, please, that Maybury will have aged ten years since his description was written. I shall head up the search in Mrs. Maybury's house, McLoughlin will take Miss Cattrell, Jones, Mrs. Goode and Robinson will mastermind the outhouses. If anyone finds anything, notify me immediately."