"No."
"OK, let's say you've been married to a man for thirty-odd years. He's been the be-all and end-all of your existence and he suddenly deserts you." He paused for further thought.
"Go on."
"I'll need to think it through properly but something along these lines. Daniel does a runner because the business has gone down the chute and he can't cope. He hangs around in London for a bit but finds that living off his wits there is worse than facing the music at home, so he comes back. Meanwhile, Mrs. Thompson has discovered, because Mrs. Goode telephones and tells her that Daniel was supposed to have gone to Streech Grange, that her husband has been seeing another woman, worse, a woman steeped in sin. She's very near the edge already and this sends her right over. Bear in mind she's a religious fanatic, her marriage has been a sham and she's had several days to sit and brood. What's she going to do when Daniel comes home unexpectedly?"
"Yes," agreed Walsh thoughtfully. "That works quite nicely. But how did she get the body to the ice house?"
"I don't know. Perhaps she persuaded him to go there when he was alive. But it's entirely logical for her to leave the body somewhere in Streech Grange, the site of Daniel's sin, and it's logical for her to have stripped him and chopped him about a bit so that we'd think it was David Maybury. She'd see that as retribution against the evil women-she probably thought they were all in it-who'd ruined her life. Do we have a follow-up on that report of someone crying near the Grange Farm cottages?"
"We do, but it's not very helpful. Both sets of occupants agreed it was after midnight because they were in bed, and they both agreed it was during the spell of hot weather that spanned the last week in May and the first two weeks in June. One lot said it was May, the other lot said it was the second week in June. Yer pays yer money and takes yer choice."
"It's all too nebulous. We need a fix on some dates. Did Staley search the Thompsons' house?"
"Twice, once on the night of his disappearance and again about two weeks later."
McLoughlin frowned. "Why the second time?"
"Well, it's interesting that. He had an anonymous tip-off that Mrs. T. had lost her marbles, butchered Daniel and hidden him under the floorboards. He turned up out of the blue one day, a couple of weeks into June, and went through the house with a magnifying glass. He found nothing except one sex-starved little woman who kept following him from room to room and making advances. He's convinced it was Mrs. Thompson who made the tip-off."
"Why?"
Walsh chuckled. "He reckons she fancied him."
"Perhaps her conscience was troubling her."
Walsh pulled into the kerb outside the Police Station. "It's all very well, Andy, but where do those blasted shoes fit in? If Daniel was wearing them, why did she leave them in the grounds? And if he wasn't, how did they get there?"
"Yes," mused McLoughlin. "I've been wondering about that. I can't help feeling she's telling the truth about the shoes. There must have been a tramp, you know. The description was too fluent and it matches the one Nick Robinson came up with. I remember the pink trousers." He raised an enquiring eyebrow. "I could try and trace him."
"Waste of time," muttered Walsh. "Even if you found him, what could he tell you?"
"Whether or not Mrs. Thompson's telling lies."
"Hmm." He hunched his shoulders over the steering wheel. "I've had an awful thought." He looked sick.
McLoughlin glanced at him.
"You don't suppose those damn women have been right all along, do you? You don't suppose this miserable tramp went into the ice house and had a heart attack?"
"What happened to his pink trousers?"
Walsh's face cleared. "Yes, yes, of course. All right, then, see if you can find him."
"I'll have to give up on the Maybury file."
"Temporarily," growled Walsh.
"And I want to take a team to search Streech grounds again." He saw thunder clouds gathering across the Inspector's face. "With a view to linking Mrs. Thompson with the ice house," he finished dispassionately.
Elizabeth stood in her favourite position, by the long window in her mother's room, watching the shadows lengthen on the terrace. She wondered how many times she had stood just so in just that place, watching. "I shall have to go back," she said at last. "They won't keep the job open indefinitely."
"You haven't any holiday owing?" asked Diana, glad that the silence was finally broken.
"Not spare. I'm going to the States for two weeks at the end of September. It leaves me with nothing to play with." She turned round. "I'm sorry, Mum."
Diana shook her head. "No need to be. Will you be staying with your father?"
Elizabeth nodded. "It's three years since I've seen him," she excused herself, "and the flight's booked."
What a gulf of misunderstanding lay between them, Diana thought, and all because they found each other so hard to talk to. When she thought back over the years, she realised their conversations had been polite but safe, never touching on anything that might lead to embarrassment. In one way, Phoebe had been lucky. There had been no division of loyalties for her children, no lingering love for their father, no need for her to justify why he had deserted them.
"Would you like a drink?" She walked over to a mahogany cabinet.
"Are you having one?"
"Yes."
"OK. I'll have a gin and tonic."
Diana poured the drinks and took the glasses over to the window. "Cheers." She perched on the back of a chair and joined her daughter's contemplation of the terrace. It was easier, on the whole, not to look at her. "For years I couldn't think about your father without getting angry. When his letters arrived for you and I saw his handwriting, I used to get so tensed up my jaw would ache for hours. I kept wondering what Miranda had that I hadn't." She gave a short laugh. "That's when I first understood what 'grinding your teeth' meant." She paused. "It took me a while but I've got over it. Now I try to remember the good times. Is she nice? I never met her, you know."
Elizabeth's attention was riveted on the antics of a sparrow on the flagstones outside, as if in its small person it was about to provide an answer to the mysteries of the universe. "It wasn't all his fault," she said defensively.
"No, it wasn't. Actually, in many ways it was more my fault. I took him for granted. I assumed he was the sort of man who could cope with a working wife, and he wasn't. He particularly disliked competing with me as a business partner. I don't blame him. He couldn't help that, any more than I could help wanting a career after you were born. The truth is, we should never have married. We were far too young and neither of us knew what we were doing. Phoebe feels the same. She married David because she was pregnant with Jonathan, and propriety amongst the middle classes twenty years ago dictated marriage. I married your father for virtually the same reasons. I wanted to go to the States with him and my parents wouldn't hear of my going as his mistress." She sighed. "God knows, Lizzie, we've all lived to regret it. We made a mess of each other's lives because we didn't have the courage to raise two fingers to convention."
The girl stared at the sparrow. "If you regret the marriage, do you also regret its consequence?"
"Do you mean, do I regret you?"
"Of course," she snapped angrily. "The two are rather closely linked, wouldn't you say?" The hurt ran deep.
Diana sought carefully for the right words. "When you were born, I used to be driven mad by people asking: Who does she take after? Is she like you or Steven? My answer was always the same: Neither. I couldn't understand why they needed to tie you to one or other of us. To me, from the moment you drew breath, you were an individual with your own character, your own looks, your own way of doing things. I love you because you're my daughter and we've grown up together, but much more than that I actually like you. I like Elizabeth Goode." She brushed a speck of dust from the girl's sleeve where it rested on the chair beside her. "You exist in your own right You're not a consequence of a marriage."