‘You’re imagining things—’
‘Am I? Oh, she’s clever. You were blind but I saw what she was up to. Bella was hardly in her grave before she was up here ... helping with this ... helping with that ... simpering shyly ... pushing in where she wasn’t wanted.’ Oh stop, Phyllis, stop! You’ll make him hate you. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was going on while Bella was still alive.’
‘That’s enough. You know that isn’t true. I won’t have you speaking of Katherine in that way.’
‘She’s only marrying you for your money. Do you think she’d look twice at you if you were paralysed and poor?’ She drove on and on. Henry Trace watched her, more amazed and distressed than angry. So much venom. He almost expected to see bile, black and thick as treacle, bubbling between her lips. When she had finished he said quietly, ‘I’d no idea you felt like this. I thought you would be pleased at my happiness. I thought you were fond of me.’
‘Fond ...’ She cried out then, hard ugly sounds. Her cheeks remained dry and red with anger. When Katherine appeared in the doorway Phyllis Cadell ran from the room, pushing the girl’s slim figure aside, unable to look at her face, which she was sure would be filled with sly laughter - or worse, with pity.
‘Oh Pookie.’ Barbara Lessiter curled her tongue into her husband’s ear like a pliant little snail. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so ...’ She took a deep breath, putting an impossible strain on the thin lace and crêpe-de-chine nightdress. Her headache was better at last.
‘There, there. You mustn’t worry,’ replied Pookie, romping happily between satin sheets. Like a very hungry man after a vast banquet he felt that what he had just received (twice) would last him forever. Which was fortunate because, as things turned out, it was going to have to from that particular source at any rate. ‘Change of life, I expect.’
At this reference to her age he felt Barbara withdraw slightly. Well, a little dig from time to time wouldn’t come amiss. Keep her on her toes. Show her she wasn’t dealing with the lovesick swain of five years ago. He’d be damned if he was going to be grateful for something that was his by rights. If her headache had gone on much longer it could have featured in the Guinness Book of Records. His hand moved again.
‘Darling ... Pooks?’
‘Mm?’ Ah, there was nothing like silk and lace. Unless it was warm bare flesh.
‘Don’t, sweetheart ... listen to Barbie ...’
Growl, growl. And a pretend doggy panting.
‘It’s just that ... I’ve been so terribly worried ... I know I’ve got to confess ... but I don’t know how to tell you ...’
Apprehension sluiced the passion from his loins, leaving him cold as ice. He seized her arms, glaring at her in the light from the ivory figurine. How could he not have guessed the reason for her neglect and distant behaviour? ‘You’ve been with someone else!’
‘Oh Pookums!’ she cried, and covered her face with her hands. ‘How could you even think such a thing of your poor Barbie?’
Relief repaired some of the sexual damage. Down in the forest something stirred. ‘Well ... what can it be, then? Can’t be too dwedful. Whisper it in Pookie’s ear.’
The lace expanded again in heartfelt preparation. ‘Well ... when I got my mink coat out of store for the Traces’ wedding the other day I left it on the back seat of the car ... just while I went shopping and ... Oh sweetheart ... someone stole it ...’ She burst into a flood of tears, then, as he did not speak, peeped coyly out between her fingers. This action, which he had once thought charming, now struck him as suitable only for a child of three. A nauseatingly winsome child at that.
‘What the hell do you want to wear a mink coat for in July?’
‘I wanted you to be proud of me.’
‘Have you been to the police?’
‘No ... I was in such a state ... I just drove around worrying ... and then I came home.’
‘You must do that tomorrow. Give them all the details. Fortunately it’s insured.’
‘Yes, darling ... I don’t suppose?’ - a serpentine arm twisted over his shoulder and around his neck - ‘Pookie will ever buy his naughty Barbie anovver one?’
Pookie’s stare gave nothing away. He was trying to recall Krystal’s remark; little Krystal who was always so pleased to see him; whose welcome was never anything but warm and friendly. What was it she had said? ‘I’d have to do it five hundred times to get a coat like that.’ He smiled calmly, almost forgivingly, at his wife and patted her smooth brown shoulder.
‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’
Chapter Three
Barnaby sat in the incident room. He was in his shirt sleeves before an open window. The soft thud of tennis balls and an occasional reproachful cry floated in from the nearby recreation ground. He twirled his rotating cards for the hundredth time and called for some coffee.
‘And not in that mug with the blasted frog squatting in it.’
‘Oh. I thought he was rather sweet,’ said Policewoman Brierley, her lips twitching.
‘Well I didn’t.’
‘No, sir.’
Barnaby spun one more time, realizing that he knew all the information by heart, hoping that a fresh reading might show a piece of the puzzle in a different light, juxtapose seemingly disparate facts, reveal with a whisk of the conjuror’s cloth something which had hitherto been darkly concealed. At least with poor old Loveless/Lovejoy/Lessiter accounted for all afternoon there was one suspect fewer.
Barnaby toyed with the idea that the murderer might be fancy free, killing to protect the reputation of his or her partner. It sounded a bit far fetched but if the partner’s legal spouse held the purse strings it might be a possibility. Money had been behind many a killing. Money and sex. Interlocked. An eternal ampersand. And a motive for murder since murder began.
Two days had passed since the funeral and Barnaby had spent one of them discussing the death of Mrs Trace with all the members of the shooting party with the exception of the farm boy and neighbouring landowners whom he had left to Troy. The only new bit of information to arise from this was that, at the time of the shooting, Phyllis Cadell was on her way back to Tye House, having got bored by the whole proceedings. Henry had expressed surprise that she had decided to accompany them in the first place. Phyllis in her turn had assured Barnaby that Bella had been urging her for some time to come out with them. Phyllis had done a certain amount of shooting when she was younger and knew how to handle a gun but had simply lost the taste for it. ‘I regretted joining them almost as soon as things really got going. I stayed for a bit then decided to give up. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself so I just slipped back to the house.’
Another example of unusual behaviour. Barnaby’s mind turned back to his cards and Miss Simpson. On the day of her death she too had behaved ‘out of character’. Were the two deaths connected? There was no sensible logical reason for believing this. Yet he still couldn’t leave the idea alone. Barnaby read the photostat of the inquest report again although by now he knew it backwards. He remembered his first quick conviction that there was something odd, some fact buried in there that didn’t make sense, but by now the whole piece was so stale he wondered where that original impulse had sprung from. Certainly repeated readings had done nothing to support or elucidate this instinctive belief.
On the morning of the second day he had interviewed Norah Whiteley in the tactfully vacated office of the headmaster at the school where she worked. She was a thin woman with a bitter mouth, mistakenly wearing very youthful clothes. What she had to tell him was disturbing.