"You're right. I'd forgotten. Touche, Inspector." She chuckled. "I was researching a feature for one of the colour supplements." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw McLoughlin's lips thin to a disapproving line. "But, hell, it was fun," she went on in a dreamy voice. "That camp is the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Frowning, Phoebe laid a restraining hand on her arm and stood up. "This is all irrelevant. Until you've examined the body, it seems to me quite pointless to speculate on whether or not it's David's. If you care to come with me, gentlemen, I will show you where it is."
"Let Fred do it," Diana protested.
"No. He's had enough shocks for one day. I'm all right. Could you make sure Molly's organising the tea?"
She opened the French windows and led the way on to the terrace. Benson and Hedges roused themselves from the warm flagstones and pushed their noses into her hand. Hedges's fur was still fluffy from his bath. She paused to stroke his head gently and pull his ears. "There's one thing I really ought to tell you, Inspector," she said.
Anne, watching from inside the drawing-room, gave a gurgle of laughter. "Phoebe's confessing to Hedges's little peccadillo and the Sergeant's turned green around the gills."
Diana pushed herself out of the sofa and walked towards her. "Don't underestimate him, Anne," she said. "You're such a fool sometimes. Why do you always have to antagonise people?"
"I don't. I simply refuse to kowtow to their small-minded conventions. If they feel antagonised that's their problem. Principles should never be compromised. The minute they are, they cease to be principles."
"Maybe, but you don't have to shove them down reluctant throats. A little common sense wouldn't come amiss at the moment. We do have a dead body on the premises. Or had you forgotten?" Her voice was more anxious than ironic.
Anne turned away from the window. "You're probably right," she agreed meekly.
"So you'll be careful?"
"I'll be careful."
Diana frowned. "I do wish I understood you. I never have, you know."
Affection surged in Anne as she studied her friend's worried face. Poor old Di, she thought, how she hated all this. She should never have come to Streech. Her natural environment was an ivory tower where visitors were vetted and unpleasantness unheard of. "You have no problem understanding me," she pointed out lightly, "you have a problem agreeing with me. My petty anarchies offend your sensibilities. I often wonder why you go along with them."
Diana walked to the door. "Which reminds me, next time you want me to lie for you, warn me first, will you? I'm not as good at controlling my facial muscles as you are."
"Nonsense," said Anne, dropping into an armchair. "You're the most accomplished liar I know."
Diana paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Why do you say that?" she asked sharply.
"Because," Anne teased her rigid back, "I was there when you told Lady Weevil that her choice of colours for her drawing-room was sophisticated. Anyone who could do that with a straight face must have unlimited muscle control."
"Lady Keevil," corrected Diana, looking round with a smile. "I should never have let you come with me. That contract was worth a fortune."
Anne was unrepentant. "I needed the lift and you can hardly blame me if I got her name wrong. Everything she said sounded as if it had been squeezed through a wet flannel. Anyway, I did you a favour. Cherry-red carpets and lime-green curtains, for God's sake! Think of your reputation."
"You know her father was a fruit wholesaler."
"You do surprise me," said Anne dryly.
3
Inside the ice house Chief Inspector Walsh firmly suppressed a slight movement in his bowels. Sergeant McLoughlin showed less control. He ran out of the building and was sick in the nettles alongside it. Unaware that she would have sympathised, he was thankful that Phoebe Maybury had returned to the Grange and was not there to see him.
"Not very nice, is it?" remarked Walsh when the Sergeant came back. "Careful where you're stepping. There are bits all over the place. Must have been where the dog disturbed it."
McLoughlin held a handkerchief to his mouth and retched violently. There was a strong smell of beer about him, and the Inspector eyed him with disfavour. A man of moods himself, he found inconsistency in others unendurable. He knew McLoughlin as well as any of the men he worked with, thought of him as a conscientious type, honest, intelligent, dependable. He even liked the man-he was one of the few who could cope with the notorious pendulum-swings of Walsh's temperament-but to see McLoughlin's weaknesses, disclosed like guilty secrets, irritated Walsh. "What the hell's the matter with you?" he demanded. "Five minutes ago you couldn't even be civil, now you're puking like a bloody baby."
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing, sir," mimicked Walsh savagely. He would have said more but there was an anger about the younger man that stilled his waspish tongue. With a sigh he took McLoughlin's arm and pushed him outside. "Get me a photographer and some decent lights-it's impossible to see properly. And tell Dr. Webster to get down here as fast as he can. I left a message for him so he should be at the Station by now." He patted the Sergeant's arm clumsily, remembering perhaps that McLoughlin was more often his supporter than his detractor. "If it's any consolation, Andy, I've never seen anything as nasty as this."
As McLoughlin returned thankfully to the house, Inspector Walsh took a pipe from his pocket, filled it and lit it thoughtfully, then began a careful examination of the ground and the brambles around the door and pathway. The ground itself told him little. The summer had been an exceptional one and the last four weeks of almost perpetual sunshine had baked it hard. The only visible tracks were where feet, probably Fred's, had trampled the weeds and grass in front of the brambles. Previous tracks, if any, had long since been obliterated. The brambles might prove more interesting. It was evident, if there were no other entrance to the ice house, that the body had at some point traversed this thorny barrier, either alive on its own two legs or dead on the back of someone else's. The big question was, how long ago? How long had that nightmare been in there?
He walked slowly round the hillock. It would, of course, have been easier to satisfy himself that the door was the only entrance from inside the structure. He excused his reluctance to do this on the basis of not wishing to disturb the evidence more than was necessary but, being honest, he knew it was an excuse. The grisly tomb held no attractions for a man alone, even for a policeman intent on discovering the truth.
He spent some time investigating round the base of an untamed laurel which grew at the back of the ice house, using a discarded bamboo stake to stir up the leaf mould which had collected there. His efforts uncovered only solid brickwork, which looked strong enough to withstand another two hundred years of probing roots. In those days, he thought, they built to last.
He sat back orr his heels for a moment, puffing on his pipe, then resumed his search, poking his stick at intervals into the nettles at the base of the ice-house roof but finding no other obvious points of weakness. He returned to the door and a closer examination of the brambles.
He was no gardener, he relied on his wife to tend their small patio garden where everything grew neatly in tubs, but even to his uneducated eye the brambles had a look of permanence. He spent some moments peering thoughtfully at the clods of earth and grass above the doorway, where roots had been torn free in handfuls, then, careful to avoid the grass which had been trodden on, he squatted beside the area of brambles which had been scythed and trampled flat. The broken stems were green with sap, most of the fruit was still unripe but the odd blackberry, more mature than its fellows, showed black and juicy amidst the ruins of its parent. With the end of the bamboo he carefully lifted the flattened mass of vegetation nearest to him and peered beneath it.