"What a sewer you live in, Paddy." McLaughlin spoke quietly, his voice level.
The big man surprised him. "If it is, it's Phoebe's fault," he had observed. "She's the focus for it all. Whatever the rights and wrongs, any normal woman would have sold up and moved on. The Grange isn't worth the price she's had to pay for it."
No, McLoughlin thought, Paddy was wrong about that. The Grange was worth whatever Phoebe had to pay, and she would go on paying because it was cheap at the price. The real cost was being borne by the people who loved her. He glanced across at her with a sudden irritation. God damn the woman! People loved her or hated her. The one thing no one seemed to feel was indifference.
"OK," he said abruptly into the silence, "you"-he jerked a finger at Eddie Staines-"are going to listen to a few home truths. You're not the brightest thing on two legs but you have to be brighter than this dickhead here." He scowled at Barnes, then held up a finger. "Number one, Eddie. Mrs. Maybury did not murder her parents. Colonel and Mrs. Gallagher died because their brakes didn't work, and their brakes didn't work because K.C. hadn't serviced the car properly. Had he done so, he would have found the corroded brake hose. Got that?"
"Yeah, but who corroded it?" asked Eddie triumphantly. "That's the question."
"Read the coroner's report," said McLoughlin wearily. "Colonel Gallagher took the car to K.C. because the brakes felt soft. He wrote a note to that effect and the note, in his handwriting, is in the file. K.C. ignored it." He held up a second finger. "Number two. Mr. David Maybury walked out of this house alive ten years ago. No one murdered him. He legged it because he had finally run through all of Mrs. Maybury's money and he didn't fancy working for his living."
"So who's arguing? Saw the bugger myself three months ago. Mind you, he's dead now." Eddie glared at Phoebe. "Hell of a way to get your own back, lady."
McLoughlin held up a third finger. "Number three, Eddie. That man wasn't David Maybury."
He looked sceptical. "Oh, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah. It was K.C. And it's not a matter for debate. It is a matter of proven fact."
There was a long silence. Very slowly, recognition dawned. "Hell, happen it was, too. Knew I knew him. But that Inspector of yours was damn sure it was Maybury."
Paddy snorted. "The only people who are ever damn sure of anything are idiots and politicians. Same difference, some would say."
They could almost follow Eddie's thought processes in the contortions of his face. "Still, I don't see it makes much difference. We're back to square one. If it was K.C. she did in this time, then stands to reason she did her old man in ten years ago. The only proof you thought she didn't was that I thought the old guy was him. You follow me?"
"I follow you," McLoughlin told him. "But the whole thing stinks. Didn't it occur to you that if it was Maybury this time, then you've been beating up on an innocent woman for ten years?"
"There was her parents-" He broke off as his brain caught up with his mouth. "Yeah, well, as I say, we're back to square one now."
"Anything but. Mrs. Maybury didn't kill K.C., Eddie. You did."
"Cobblers!"
"He wasn't murdered. He died of cold, starvation and self-neglect. You were the last person to see him alive. If you'd offered him a hand he wouldn't be dead now. He needed help, and you didn't give it to him."
"Now listen here, mister. You trying to set me up or something? The Inspector said he was stabbed in the gut."
Between the Scylla of Barnes and the Charybdis of Walsh, was it any wonder, thought McLoughlin, that Phoebe had retreated into her fortress? Without a twinge of regret, he rode rough-shod over Walsh's thirty years on the Force. "The Inspector greased a few palms and was over-promoted," he said bluntly. "It happens in the police just as it happens everywhere else. They'll give him early retirement as a result of this cock-up and get shot of him."
"Jesus!" said Eddie, impressed by so much honesty from a policeman.
"You cretin," muttered Peter Barnes. "He's running bloody rings round you."
McLoughlin ignored him. "Number four, Eddie," he went on. "When you and the scum you associate with come up here for a spot of queer-bashing, you miss the mark. There are no queers living in Streech Grange. Who told you there were?"
"It's common knowledge." Eddie looked uncomfortable. "The three dykes. The three witches. They're always called one or the other." He darted a quick glance at Peter Barnes. "Me, I'm not into queer-bashing."
"I see." McLoughlin transferred his attention to Barnes. "So it's you who's not keen on queers." He yawned suddenly and rubbed his eyes. "What happened? Someone try it on at that school you went to?" He saw the sudden pinching round the boy's nostrils and his brooding face cracked into a grin. "Don't tell me you enjoyed it, and now you're busting a gut to prove you didn't."
"Fucking perverts," the boy blurted out. "They make me sick." He spat at Phoebe. "Fucking perverts. They should be locked up." A well of loathing seemed to overflow. "I hate them."
Something malignant stirred in the depths of McLoughlin's dark eyes. He took a lightning step forward and clamped his hand across Barnes's mouth, digging his fingers and thumb into the soft flesh of the cheeks and forcing the boy up on to the balls of his feet. "I find you extremely offensive," he said softly. "You're a moronic little psychopath and in my book it's the likes of you who should be locked up, not the likes of Oscar Wilde. The only contribution you will ever make to society will be a negative one when you pass your prejudices and your miserably inadequate IQ to a succeeding generation." He levered Barnes up another inch. "In addition it makes me very angry to hear these women referred to as perverts. Do you understand me?"
Barnes tried to speak but the words stuck in his throat. McLoughlin dug his fingers deeper and Barnes nodded vigorously.
"Good," McLoughlin unlocked his fingers and pushed him away with the heel of his hand. He favoured Staines with a friendly smile. "I hope you can see where all this is leading, Eddie. You do realise I am giving you the benefit of the doubt. I am assuming you genuinely believed these people were guilty of something."
Eddie's good-humoured face puckered in worried concentration. "Listen, mister, I just came along to see justice done. I swear to God that's all I came for. We got the call you were letting her off again. This queer-bashing stuff, that's Peter's kick." He flicked a shy look at Phoebe and Diana. "Jesus, it doesn't make sense anyway. If you're not queer, why do you go along with it?"
Diana rolled her eyes to Heaven. "Do you know, I've often wondered that myself." She turned to Phoebe. "I've forgotten, old thing, why do we go along with it?"
Phoebe's rich laugh tumbled from her mouth. "Don't be such a fool." She looked at Eddie and raised her hands helplessly. "We've never had a choice. Hardly anyone ever speaks to us. Those who do, know all about us. Those who don't, assume whatever they want to assume. You have assumed we're gay." Her eyes laughed softly. "Bar copulating naked by the village pond with a series of men, I don't see how we could ever prove we weren't. In any case, would you have thought any better of us if you'd known we preferred men?"
"Yeah," said Eddie with an appreciative wink. "I bloody well would. Mind you," he continued thoughtfully, "none of this explains what happened to your old man. If the only reason he legged it was because the money'd dried up why didn't he get you off the hook when he read what was happening to you? It only needed a phone call to the police."
There was an awkward silence.
"You talk as if the man had a clear conscience," said McLoughlin at last. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the colour drain from Jonathan's set face. Dammit, he thought. Whichever way you turned, you were always caught between the rock and the hard place. "It's sub judice, Eddie, which is why we've never released details. But I can tell you this, the minute the man resurfaces he will be prosecuted." He shrugged. "For the moment you'll just have to take my word that it suits his book if everyone thinks he's dead. He was a villain. We'll find him one day."