‘That’s not funny, Keith,’ Mrs Sweeney said angrily. ‘If that’s the best you can find to say you can go and drink somewhere else.’
Barnaby listened for another half hour as more people came and went, but the verdict on Miss Simpson didn’t change much. Very kind. Patient with the children. Ever so generous if there was a stall. Jam. Honey. Jars of fruit. Did lovely flowers for the church. That poor Miss Bellringer. Whatever will she do now? And what about Benjy? They pine, you know. And he’s getting on. She’ll be greatly missed. Sadly missed.
Even when it was shorn of the eulogistic flavour deemed obligatory in all statements about the recently dead, Barnaby was still left with the picture of a singularly nice human being. Mrs Sweeney’s final remark seemed to sum it up neatly.
‘Not an enemy in the world.’
The air was green and fresh as they entered the wood, yet within minutes Barnaby felt a change. As the trees closed tightly over their heads the ripeness of the vegetation all around and underfoot assailed his nostrils with a rich and rotten scent.
Miss Bellringer was leading the way. She was carrying a shooting stick and keeping close to the chief inspector, as he had requested.
‘It was just over there I think, by those hellebores. Yes - there it is.’
‘Wait.’ Barnaby took her arm. ‘If you could stay here, please. The less trampling about the better.’
‘I understand.’ She sounded disappointed but stayed obediently where she was, opening her shooting stick and perching on the canvas strap. She called, ‘More to the left’ and ‘Getting warmer’ and ‘Hotsy totsy’ as he walked carefully around the patch of little green flowers. Then, when she saw him bob down, ‘Perfect isn’t it?’
Barnaby studied the orchid and the little stick with the red ribbon. Inanimate, the marker still seemed more alive than the ash-pale plant. There was something very touching about the neatly tied bow. He got up and looked round. As far as he could see the leaf mould in the immediate area, although scuffed about, probably by rabbits and other small creatures, revealed no more serious disturbance.
To the left of him was a tightly latticed screen of branches. Treading carefully, he looked at the ground. There were two quite deep indentations indicating that someone had been standing there for some considerable time. He noted where the broader part of the shoe had pressed, stood parallel and looked through the branches.
He was facing a hollow. Quite a large piece of the ground was flattened: bluebell leaves and bracken bent backwards and crushed. He walked around the screen and approached the rim of the hollow, where he crouched and studied the ground more closely, being careful not to step on the squashed area, which was quite extensive. Someone or something had certainly been threshing about a bit. On his way back to Miss Bellringer he saw on the ground an impression not clearly defined enough to be called an outline, as if a log or something heavy had briefly lain there.
‘Thank you for showing me.’ It was good to break out of the oppressive crowding trees into an open field. Lapwings wheeled overhead in a sky full of light and sun. ‘Would you like to be taken to the inquest, Miss Bellringer?’
‘Oh no. We have an excellent village taxi. I shall be quite all right.’
As they approached Beehive Cottage they saw that Sergeant Troy, watching watchfully, was now surrounded by a small but appreciative audience. Barnaby bade Miss Bellringer goodbye and crossed the road. He was immediately accosted by the youngest of the group.
‘Woss he doing standing around like a wally?’
‘Is he the police?’
‘You’re the police aren’t you?’
‘Why ain’t he got a uniform on?’
‘Now, son.’ The words were chopped off individually through Troy’s gritted teeth. ‘Why don’t you just move along? There’s nothing to see here.’ The suggestion sounded stale and had a mechanical ring. The group stayed put.
‘I’ll send someone to relieve you, Troy.’
‘I’m off duty in half an hour.’
‘You were, Sergeant, you were. Someone should be here by five.’ A teenage girl with a toddler and a baby in a push-chair joined the group. Barnaby grinned. ‘You should have a full house by then.’
The proceedings at the coroner’s court the following day took no time at all. The remains of Emily Simpson had been identified, a short time previously, by her friend Lucy Bellringer, and were released for burial. The pathologist’s report was read and the inquest adjourned to a later date pending further police inquiries.
PART TWO
INVESTIGATION
Chapter One
Barbara Lessiter approached the cheval-glass in the corner of her bedroom. She had switched off all the lights with one exception, the ivory figurine by her bed. The light from this filtered through an apricot shade, casting a warm glow over her shimmering nightdress and brown, solarium-toasted skin. Little peaks of strawberry-scented mousse-like cream trembled on the tips of her fingers. She started to stroke her throat from the hollow at the base to the point of her chin, rhythmically, closing her eyes and smiling. Then, using both hands and more mousse she tapped all over her face. Oil for her eyes came last. French, forty-five pounds a pot, and it went nowhere.
She loved this ritual. Even as a young girl, years before it had been necessary, she had massaged and patted and knuckled and stroked with voluptuous satisfaction. It was hardly necessary even now, she told herself, secure in the light from the shaded lamp.
After she had finished her face she brushed her hair: fifty strokes from the crown to the tip. Glowing reddish-brown hair as rich and glossy as henna and egg yolks and conditioners could make it. She tossed her head back and smiled.
The movement caused a strap to slip from her shoulder. She came closer to the glass, touched her naked breast, touched the tiny purplish red bruises and smiled again, a smile of greedy reminiscence. Then she stood very still, listening.
Someone was approaching her door. She held her breath. There was a knock. It sounded tentative, almost apologetic. She waited, covering up her bare skin as if the door had been transparent. After a minute or two the slippered footsteps moved away. She breathed out, a long sated exhalation. She must let him in next time. It had been simply ages. And he’d been very good, considering. But God - what a contrast it would be ...
She’d been born Barbara Wheeler in Uxbridge ‘some time in the late fifties’, she told people with coy deceit. Her father was a ganger on the railway, her mother a household drudge. They had five other children. Only Barbara was beautiful. They were packed into a terraced house flush to the pavement, with a concrete back yard. She shared a bedroom with two sisters, now household drudges themselves, defending her space and belongings with tigerish possessiveness. She had scorned their cheap clothes and cosmetics, holding her nose when they sprayed on their Californian Poppy from Woolworth’s. She started stealing at fifteen - creams, perfumes and lotions, peeling off the price labels, knowing that no one at home would ever have heard of the brands.
After her sisters had been consumed into the local sweet factory she got a job as a filing clerk in a solicitor’s office and, it seemed to her, a precarious toehold on the slippery slope that would lead her out of a slummish and ugly environment into the glossy perfection of middle-class life. A world where you didn’t have to go to a park filled with screaming kids and snapping dogs to enjoy grass and trees but had them actually belonging to you, in your own garden. Where people washed their clothes before they looked dirty and men shook hands when they met whilst women brushed powdered cheek against powdered cheek in easy, meaningless display.