"So what happened with Peter and Emma?"
"It all became rather unpleasant. Emma kept taking her knickers down in front of Jonathan." She shook her head. "I drew the line when he started taking his down, too. He was nine." She sighed. "Anyway, like a fool, I told David. So he promptly phoned Dilys and gave her an earful. He called her a vulgar bitch and said 'like mother, like daughter.' After that, they never came up here again, but I suppose Jon might have shown them the ice house before they were banned."
Diana gave a guilty giggle. "For once David was probably right. Emma hasn't improved much with the passing years, let's face it."
"He had no business to speak to anyone like that," said Phoebe coldly. "God knows, I can't stand the woman, but Jon was behaving as badly as Emma. David never even told him off for it. He thought it was a great joke, talked about Jon becoming a man. I could have killed him for that. If anyone was vulgar, David was."
Diana was disturbed by Phoebe's mood. She had known her to be bitter before but never with such a depth of feeling over something so petty. It was as if the events of the afternoon had caused a breach in her long-held defences, releasing the pent-up emotions of years. She saw the dangers of it only too clearly. She and Anne had thought of Jane as the weak link. Were they wrong? Was it not Phoebe, after all, who was the more vulnerable?
"You're tired, old thing," she said calmly, putting her arm through the other woman's. "Let's go to bed and sleep on it."
Phoebe's head drooped wearily. "I've got such'a bloody awful headache."
"Hardly surprising in the circumstances. Take some aspirin. You'll be a new woman in the morning."
They walked arm in arm down the corridor. "Did they ask you about Fred and Molly?" queried Phoebe suddenly.
"A bit."
"Oh, lord."
"Don't worry about it." They had reached the stairs. Diana gave her a kiss and released her. "Walsh also asked me to describe the ice house," she said with reluctance.
"I told you he was dangerous," said Phoebe, walking up the stairs.
Diana's footsteps were loud in the silence. The phrase "quiet as the grave" came to haunt her as she took off her shoes and tip-toed along the corridor. She eased Anne's door open and looked round it. Anne was at the desk, working at her word-processor. Diana whistled quietly to attract her attention, then pointed at the ceiling. Together they crept up the stairs to Anne's bedroom.
Anne followed her in, eyes alight with mischief and laughter. "My God, Di, this is so unlike you. You're always such a stickler for appearances. You do realise the place is still crawling with filth?"
"Don't be an idiot. It's not a game this time, so just shut up and listen."
She pushed Anne on to the bed and perched, cross-legged, beside her. As she spoke, her hands worked nervously, kneading and pummelling the softness of the duvet.
7
The curtain was drawn aside and Phoebe Maybury appeared at the window. She stared out for a moment, her hair a fiery red where the lamplight caught it from behind, her eyes huge in her strained white face. Looking at her, George Walsh wondered what emotions had stirred her. Fear? Guilt? Madness even? There was something amiss in those staring eyes. She was so close he could have touched her. He held his breath. She reached out, caught the handle and pulled the window to. The curtain fell back into place and moments later the light was switched off. The murmur of Phoebe's and Diana's voices continued in the kitchen, but their words were no longer audible.
Walsh beckoned to McLoughlin, whom he could dimly see, and led the way on soft feet across the terrace and on to the grass. He had been keeping a wary eye on the lighted windows of Anne's wing where her silhouette, seated at her desk, showed up strongly against the curtains. She had changed position frequently in the last half hour, but had not moved from her seat. Walsh was as sure as he could be that his and McLoughlin's short spell of eavesdropping had been unobserved.
They set off silently in the direction of the ice house, McLoughlin lighting their way with a torch which he kept shaded with one hand. When Walsh judged them far enough away from the house to be unheard, he stopped and turned to his colleague. "What did you make of that, Andy?"
"I'd say we just heard the clearest admission of guilt we're ever likely to hear," the other threw out.
"Hm." Walsh chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "I wonder. What was it she said?"
"She admitted to relief at having got rid of her husband so easily." He shrugged. "Seems clear enough to me."
Walsh started to walk again. "It wouldn't stand up in a court of law for a minute," he mused. "But it's interesting, definitely interesting." He came to an abrupt halt. "I think she's cracking at long last. I got the impression that Mrs. Goode certainly thinks so. What's her part in this? She can't have been involved in Maybury's disappearance. We had her thoroughly checked and there's no doubt she was in America at the time."
"Accessory after the fact? She and the Cattrell woman have known Mrs. Maybury did it but have kept quiet for the sake of the children." He shrugged again. "Bar that, she seems straight enough. She doesn't know much about the ice house, that's for sure."
"Unless she's bluffing." He pondered for a few minutes. "Doesn't it seem odd to you that she can have lived here for eight years and not have seen inside that place?"
The moon came out from behind a cloud and lit their way with a cold grey lustre. McLoughlin switched off the torch. "Perhaps she didn't fancy it," he observed with grim humour. "Perhaps she knew what was in there."
This remark brought Walsh up short again. "Well, well," he murmured, "I wonder if that's it. It makes sense. No one's going to poke around in a place where they know there's a dead body. They're a hard-bitten trio. I can't see any of them going out of her way to do what's morally right. They'd harbour a corpse quite happily, provided it was out of sight. What do you think?"
His Sergeant scowled. "Women are a closed book to me, sir. I wouldn't even pretend to understand them."
Walsh chuckled. "Kelly been playing you up again?"
The laugh pierced McLoughlin's brain, scintillating and sharp as a needle. He turned away and thrust his hands and the torch deep into the pockets of his bomber jacket. Tempt me, he thought, just tempt me. "We've had a row. Nothing serious."
Walsh, who knew enough of McLoughlin's prolonged marital problems to be sympathetic, grunted. "Funnily enough, I saw her a couple of days ago with Jack Booth. She was swinging along without a care in the world, never seen her so cheerful. She's not pregnant, I suppose? She had a real bloom on her."
The bastard should have hit him. It would have hurt less. "That's probably because she's gone to live with Jack," he said casually. "She left last week." Now laugh, you sod, laugh, laugh, laugh, and give me an excuse to smash your face in.
Walsh, at a loss, gave McLoughlin's arm an awkward pat. He understood now why the lad had been so touchy the last few days. To lose your wife was bad enough, to lose her to your closest friend was a belter. My God! Jack Booth, of all people! He'd been best man at their wedding. Well, well. It explained a good deal. Why McLoughlin walked alone these days. Why Jack had suddenly decided to leave the force to work for a security firm in Southampton. "I had no idea. I'm sorry."
"It's no big deal, sir. It was all very amicable. No hard feelings on either side."
He was very cool about it. "Perhaps it's a temporary infatuation," Walsh suggested lamely. "Perhaps she'll come back when she's got over it."
McLoughlin's teeth gleamed white inside his grin, but the night hid the black rage in his eyes. "Do me a favour, sir, that's about the last thing I want to hear. God knows we never had much to say to each other before she went What the hell would we talk about if she came back?" Jesus, he wanted to hit someone. Did they all know? Were they all laughing? He would kill the first person who laughed.