‘Once a month.’
‘And did yesterday follow the usual pattern?’
‘No. We had a guest speaker.’ Already she was sounding impatient. ‘What on earth has our meeting to do with someone breaking in and attacking Gerald?’
‘No one broke in, Miss Lyddiard.’ Barnaby saw the release of this information as inevitable given the form his questioning would be compelled to take.
‘You mean’ - Amy was staring in disbelief - ‘Gerald just opened the door and let him in?’
‘Opening the door’ - Honoria separated her words and spoke loudly as if Amy was not only mentally retarded but deaf as well - ‘is not the same as letting someone in. People are always calling round,’ she turned back to Barnaby, ‘delivering rubbishy newspapers, begging for charity or asking for jumble—’
‘At that hour of the night?’ Troy consciously exaggerated his West of Slough twang, whining his vowels and dropping his T’s - emphasising the social divide but on his own terms. He could have saved his breath. Honoria did not even deign to glance in his direction, just stared blankly down her nose, her expression that of someone noticing a fresh and particularly repulsive specimen of doggy doo in the middle of their priceless Aubusson.
‘A guest speaker?’ reminded Barnaby.
‘Grave disappointment. Max Jennings. Some sort of novelist.’
The name sounded vaguely familiar, though Barnaby couldn’t think from where. Certainly it would not be from personal experience, for he never read fiction. Indeed hardly read at all, preferring to paint or cook or garden in his spare time.
‘Consequently,’ concluded Honoria, ‘we finished later than usual. Around ten thirty.’
‘And did you all leave then?’
‘All but Rex St John. And Jennings.’
‘To go straight home?’
‘Of course,’ snapped Honoria, adding, without apparent irony, ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’
‘And you didn’t go out again?’ She stared at him as if he were mad. ‘Or return to Plover’s Rest for any reason?’
Pluvvers is it? noted Troy, who had been rhyming it with Rover’s, as in Return.
‘Certainly not.’
‘And ...’ Barnaby turned to the younger woman. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t ...’
‘Mrs Lyddiard - Amy. No. I didn’t go out either.’
‘Did you retire straight away?’ Barnaby asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Honoria. ‘I had a headache. The visitor was allowed to smoke. A disgusting habit. He wouldn’t have done it here.’
‘And you, Mrs Lyddiard?’ Barnaby smiled encouragingly.
‘Not quite straight away. First I made us a drink - cocoa actually—’
‘They don’t want to know every little detail of our domestic life.’
‘I’m sorry, Honoria.’
‘Why don’t you tell them how much sugar you put in? Describe the cups and saucers.’
Amy’s full lower lip started to quiver and Barnaby gave up. There seemed little point, given Honoria’s recent strictures on the spreading of gossip, in persisting. Plenty of other people were yet to be questioned and some, merely by the law of averages, were bound to prove co-operative. And he could always get back to Mrs Lyddiard, preferably when she was alone. But Troy jumped in where his superior had decided not to tread. Touching his tie and ostentatiously displaying nicotined fingertips he said, ‘What sort of man was Mr Hadleigh?’
‘He was a gentleman.’
And that put paid to that. End of conversation, end of audience. Barnaby explained that their fingerprints would be needed. Honoria retaliated with great vigour. Such a degrading procedure was quite out of the question. As Amy was showing them out she could be heard declaiming loudly, ‘Jumped up clowns!’
A gentleman. Troy kicked savagely at the gravel as they made their way back to the rusty gate. Of course we all know what that means. The upper crust on life’s farm-house. He lit a cigarette. A member of the club. Right tie. Right accent. Right attitude. Right sort of money. Right wing. (Troy himself was extremely right wing, but from quite a different jumping-off point, and for quite different reasons.) And, of course, blue balls.
‘You can’t believe folk like that, can you?’ He opened the gate and stood aside to let Barnaby pass through. ‘In this D and A. I bet she’s never done a stroke of work in her life. Bloody parasite.’
‘Now look.’ Barnaby, his voice sharp and irritable, stopped in mid-stride. His back ached from standing and he liked being patronised no more than the next man. ‘Your prejudices are your own affair, Gavin, unless they interfere with your work, in which case they also become mine. Our job is to extract information and to persuade people to reveal themselves. Anything that hinders this procedure is a time-wasting bloody nuisance. And I don’t expect to find it coming from my own side of the fence.’
‘Sir.’
‘Have you got that?’
‘Yeah. Got that.’ The sergeant chewed furiously on his high tar. ‘It’s just they get up my fucking nose.’
‘No one’s asking you to pretend liking or respect. In any case either attitude would be as inappropriate as the one you’re currently wallowing in. Your own feelings are immaterial. Or should be. Self-absorption is fatal in our job. We should be looking out, not in.’
‘Yeah,’ said Troy again. ‘Sorry, chief.’
Trouble was, he knew Barnaby was right. And on the whole he did look out for he loved his work and wanted to do it well. Troy took great pride even in his most modest achievements - of which, it had to be said, there were many. He decided to make a real effort. Politeness to a fault would be the order of the day. After all, civility cost nothing. But there’d be no green-welly licking. Green-welly licking was right out.
By this time they were halfway across the green. Kitty Fosse, a dark, attractive girl, a reporter on the Causton Echo, came running to meet them.
‘Hi, chief inspector. What’s the story?’
‘Hullo, Kitty.’ He walked on. The reporter, hurrying to keep up, stumbled over a tussock of grass and Troy leapt forward to assist.
‘Someone in the crowd said a body had been taken out,’ she said, while attempting to retrieve her arm.
‘That’s the case, yes.’
‘And is it the man who lived there? (Thank you, sergeant, I can manage.) A certain,’ she checked her spiral notebook, ‘Gerald Hadleigh?’
‘Mr Hadleigh was found dead early today in suspicious circumstances.’
‘Who by? (I said I could manage!)’ She wrenched her arm away. ‘How was he killed?’
‘You know the form, Kitty. There’ll be a proper statement later from communications.’
As the chief strode away Troy turned to the girl. ‘Why don’t we meet up later for a drink? Might have a leak for you by then.’
‘You’re not catching me on that one twice.’ Kitty gave him a look of deep disgust.
‘Sorry?’
‘Eighteen months ago. The Jolly Cavalier?’ She had naively gone along hoping for some sort of scoop, but had received instead several propositions, none of which was fit for a girl to blow her nose on.
‘Hey - that’s right.’ He grinned in belated recognition. ‘Another time then?’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’
Barnaby had a visit to Rex St John next in mind. If he and Jennings had been the last to leave, discovering the time and order of their departure was extremely relevant. They found the weather-beaten clapboard house, almost directly opposite Plover’s Rest, without any trouble but, although their approach produced a canine response the like of which neither man had ever heard nor ever wished to hear again, no human soul appeared.