"That was my lungs gasping," he said, attempting a joke.
"No," she whispered, "it wasn't you." Her step faltered and he swung the beam towards her. She plucked pathetically at her dressing-gown. "I've got my nightie on." Her lips were trembling uncontrollably. "I thought it was my father."
McLoughlin caught her as she slumped in a dead faint. In the distance, carried on the wind, came the faint sough of a siren.
"What did she mean, Mrs. Maybury?" McLoughlin was leaning wearily against the Aga, watching Phoebe make tea.
Anne had been rushed to hospital with Jonathan and Diana in attendance. Jane was asleep in bed with Elizabeth watching over her. Police were swarming all over the garden in search of a suspect. Phoebe, under pressure from McLoughlin, was answering questions in the kitchen.
She had her back to him. "She was frightened. I don't suppose she meant anything by it."
"She wasn't frightened, Mrs. Maybury, she was terrified, and not of me. She said: 'I've got my nightie on. I thought it was my father.' " He moved round so that he was facing her. "Forgetting for the moment that she hasn't seen her father for ten years, why should she associate him with the fact that she was wearing a nightie? And why should it terrify her? She said she heard breathing."
Phoebe refused to meet his eyes. "She was upset," she said.
"Are you going to make me ask Jane when she wakes up?" he demanded brutally.
She raised her lovely face. "You'd do that, I suppose." She made as if to push her spectacles up her nose, then realised she hadn't got them on and dropped her hand to the table.
"Yes," he said firmly.
With a sigh, she poured two cups of tea. "Sit down, Sergeant. You may not know it but you look dreadful. Your face is covered in scratches and your shirt's torn."
"I couldn't see where I was going," he explained, taking a chair and straddling it.
"I gathered that." She was silent for a moment. "I don't want you asking Jane questions," she said quietly, taking the other chair, "even less so after tonight. She couldn't cope. You'll understand that because I think you've guessed already what she meant by her remark." She looked at him enquiringly.
"Your husband abused her sexually," he said.
She nodded. "I blame myself because I had no idea what he was doing. I found out one night when I came home early from work. I was the evening receptionist at the doctor's surgery," she explained. "We needed the money. David had sent Johnny to a boarding prep-school. That day I had flu and Dr. Penny sent me home and told me to go to bed. I walked in on my poor little Jane's rape." Her face was quite impassive as if, long ago, she had realised the futility of nurtured anger. "His violence had always been directed at me," she went on, "and in a way I asked for it. While he was beating me, I could be certain he wasn't touching the children. Or I thought I could." She gave a mirthless laugh. "He took full advantage of my naivety and Jane's terror of him. He had been raping her systematically since she was seven years old and he kept her quiet by telling her he would kill me if she ever said anything. She believed him." She fell silent.
"Did you kill him?"
"No." She raised her eyes to his. "I could have done quite easily. I would have, if I'd had anything to kill him with. A child's bedroom doesn't lend itself to murder weapons."
"What happened?"
"He ran away," she said unemotionally. "We never saw him again. I reported him missing three days later after several people had phoned to say he hadn't kept appointments. I thought it might look odd if I didn't."
"Why didn't you tell the police the truth about him?"
"Would you, Sergeant, with a severely disturbed child your only witness? I wasn't going to let her be questioned, nor was I going to give the police a motive for a murder I didn't commit. She was under a psychiatrist for years because of what happened. When she became anorexic, we thought she was going to die. I'm only telling you now to protect her from further distress."
"Have you any idea what happened to your husband?"
"None. I've always hoped he killed himself but, frankly, I doubt he had the guts. He loved inflicting pain on others but couldn't take it himself."
"Why did he run away?"
She didn't answer immediately. "I honestly don't know," she said at last. "I've thought about it often. I think, perhaps, for the first time in his life he was afraid."
"Of what? The police? Prosecution?"
She smiled grimly, but didn't answer.
McLoughlin toyed with his teacup. "Someone tried to murder Miss Cattrell," he said. "Your daughter thought she heard her father. Could he have come back?"
She shook her head. "No, Sergeant, David would never come back." She looked him straight in the eye as she brushed a strand of red hair from her forehead. "He knows if he did, I'd kill him. I'm the one he's afraid of."
A very irritable Walsh sat in Anne's armchair and watched a policeman photographing prints on the outside of what was left of the French windows. It was a job that couldn't be put off till the morning in case it rained. The broken slivers of glass on the flagstones had been covered with weighted-down polythene. "There are going to be dozens of prints," he muttered to McLoughlin. "Apart from anything else, half the Hampshire police force have left their grubby paw marks round the shop." McLoughlin was examining the carpet by the French windows, looking for blood spots. He moved across to the desk. "Anything?" Walsh demanded.
"Nothing." His eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion.
"So what happened here, Andy?" Walsh cast a speculative eye over his Sergeant, before glancing at his watch. "You say you found her at eleven forty or thereabouts. It is now one thirty and we have come up with some vague sounds in the distance and a woman with a fractured skull. What's your guess?"
McLoughlin shook his head. "I haven't got one, sir. I wouldn't even know where to start. We'd better pray she comes round soon and can tell us something."
Walsh levered himself out of the chair and shuffled over to the window. "Haven't you finished yet?" he demanded of the man outside.
"Just about, sir." He took a last photograph and lowered his camera.
"I'll leave someone here overnight and you can do the inside tomorrow." Walsh watched while the man packed up his equipment and left, carefully skirting the broken glass, then he shuffled back to the chair, playing up his age. He took out his pipe and began the process of filling it, watching McLoughlin closely from beneath the angry jut of his brows. "All right, Sergeant," he snapped, "now you can tell me just what the hell you've been up to. I don't like the smell of this one little bit. If I find you've been getting your priorities mixed, by God you'll be for the high jump."
Exhaustion and jangling nerves combined in a prolonged yawn. "I was trying to steal a bit of a march, sir. I thought there might be promotion in it." Bold, bare-faced lies, he thought, nothing too concrete, not even a half-truth that Walsh could check up on. If Phoebe could get away with it, then so could he.
Walsh's frown deepened. "Go on."
"I came over the wall at the bottom to see what happened when she came back from the Station. I must have got here by about ten forty-five. The others had all gone to bed but Miss Cattrell was sitting in that chair you're sitting in. She finally switched off her downstairs light at about eleven fifteen. I hung around for another ten minutes then set off for the car. I hadn't gone far when I thought I heard voices, so I came back to investigate. Her window was slightly open. I shone my torch round inside and found her there." He jerked his head towards the middle of the room.
Walsh champed thoughtfully on the stem of the pipe. "It was lucky you did. Mrs. Maybury said you were giving her heart massage when she came in. You probably saved her life." He lit the pipe and studied the Sergeant through the smoke. "Is this the truth?"