‘Good God, man, of course I remember.’
‘What I’m asking is,’ he glanced down at the form, ‘you said she knocked at the door.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you see anyone open it?’
‘Well ... Gerald.’
‘But did you see?’
‘No. The porch is in the way.’
‘Did you hear the chain being taken off, perhaps?’
‘Not really. The taxi’s engine was running.’
‘Just one more thing. When you looked through the window—’
‘I’m not discussing this matter any more. I’ve told you - there’s someone here.’ She banged the phone down.
It didn’t really signify. Barnaby, mentally transported to the cottage, stood precisely where Laura Hutton had stood, in the soft earth of the flower border, and peered through an imaginary gap in the velvet curtains. He recalled the shape and furnishings of the room.
‘What’s all this in aid of, chief?’
Barnaby did not reply for some time. Just sat, his eyes focused on the past, tapping at the statement absently.
‘We’ve been taking things at face value, sergeant.’
‘How’s that then?’
‘Obviously one has to do this at the beginning of a case, but I have foolishly let things run on.’
‘You mean in respect of this woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, chief. We’ve followed the usual procedures. We already know a little bit more about her. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she’s found.’
‘I doubt if she will ever be “found”, Gavin. I doubt, in fact, if she exists at all.’
‘But all these people have seen her.’
‘I believe that what they have seen is Gerald Hadleigh.’
‘Hadleigh?’
‘That’s right.’
There was complete silence after this. Troy searched for the correct response. Or at least one that would not make him look an absolute prat. But the truth was that this bizarre possibility had simply not occurred to him and, far from now appearing quite likely, the more he thought about the idea the barmier it seemed. In the end he said, simply, ‘What makes you so sure, sir?’
‘Various things, but primarily aspects of Hadleigh’s character. This immense reserve, for instance, that everyone who has met him comments on. His secrecy. I’m obviously guessing blind here, but he may have regarded this woman as his true self and the suave, retired civil servant as a false persona. This would make all the lies he seems to have told comprehensible.’
‘Freaky deaky.’ Troy flashed his Glad To Be Normal button. ‘Just a tarty old drag queen then.’
‘I was thinking of transvestism, which is a much more complicated business. The majority are heteros, often with wives and families. The condition is a psychological one and may not affect their sex lives at all.’
‘It’d bloody affect mine,’ said Troy. ‘Maureen came to bed in pit boots, Y-fronts and a jokey moustache I’d be right out the window.’ He paused, shocked into temporary silence by the very thought. ‘So what do they get out of it then? I mean - queers dressing up, OK, it’s sick,’ - he pulled a face of grotesquely exaggerated repulsion - ‘but if they’re playing the girly part in these gruesome fuckarounds, well ... there you go. But for a straight bloke to do it just to sit around in a hotel lobby - what’s the point?’
‘Simply to be accepted in public as a woman.’
Simply? What was simple about stapling your balls together and calling yourself Doris?
‘They have their own clubs as well. Places where they can meet. But the real challenge is to walk down the street without anyone having the faintest idea that you aren’t exactly what you appear to be.’
‘You seem to know all about it, chief,’ said Troy. Then, watching his back, ‘No offence.’
‘Cully had a friend that way inclined. At Cambridge. She talked about him a lot.’
‘Right.’ The sergeant erased, with some difficulty, a lovely face from his mind’s eye. ‘He certainly seemed to have kept it under his saucy black hat. Not easy in a sharp-eyed place like Midsomer Worthy.’
‘I presume the way it worked was, he’d get all togged up then into the garage via the kitchen and drive straight off.’
‘Having first opened the garage doors.’
‘Well, as the general idea was to avoid drawing attention to himself, Gavin, I think we can safely assume he would have first opened the garage doors, yes.’
‘So, when the car was stolen, he’d be right up shit creek.’
‘Which is why he didn’t go to Uxbridge station to report the theft.’
‘But didn’t Laura Hutton say this woman knocked and someone let her in?’
‘I see that as an extra precaution. Although it was late, and the taxi had taken him right up to the house, at the moment he alighted he must have felt extremely vulnerable. Those halogen lamps are hellish bright. What if someone had chosen that moment to walk by? Or been peeping out from their net curtains?’
‘Or, as things turned out, hiding behind a bush.’
‘It’s common sense to assume that, if you see a person knock on a door and then disappear inside a house, the door has been opened from the inside. But we now know that Mrs Hutton did not see that actually happen.’
‘Hang on though ...’ Troy screwed up his face again, this time in concentration. ‘Didn’t she see this woman and Hadleigh through the window? Drinking wine or something.’
‘No. She saw only the woman.’
‘But Hadleigh’d hardly be drinking a toast to himself.’
‘I think that’s just what he was doing. There’s a mirror over the fireplace. Why shouldn’t he be raising a glass in self-congratulation after having made it safely back?’
‘Yeah. Actually ...’ Troy abandoned the sentence but nodded, indicating that he understood completely. Tell the truth, he himself had more than once, whilst waxing and buffing his newly-bought, secondhand Ford Sierra Cossie, raised a can of ice-cold Carling’s and winked at the drop-dead stud reflected in the wing mirror. A thought displaced this attractive recollection.
‘No wonder Laura Hutton thought the woman reminded her of somebody. It was Hadleigh, not that painting. But if all this happened the night before the murder, where’s the kinky gear?’
‘Presumably in the suitcase.’
‘Wow.’ Troy barely breathed the exclamation. His mind was running every which way. ‘That’s why the chest of drawers was always kept locked.’
‘I should imagine so.’
‘But - not at the time of the murder?’
‘One of the things I discovered from Cully is that this need for cross-dressing often coincides with periods of extreme stress. And we know that Hadleigh was suffering in just such a way directly before he died.’
‘So - about to slip into the frillies, he was interrupted ...’ The words tumbled over each other. Troy got up and started walking around, as drawn to this new scenario now as he had previously been wary. ‘Which would explain why he had got undressed but not into his pyjamas. Hang about, though - would he even think of doing this while someone was still in the house?’
‘I would have said not. But we must remember that he and Jennings go back a long way. For all we know the “unpleasantness in the past” that Hadleigh referred to might have to do with this very thing.’
‘Perhaps Jennings was threatening exposure?’
‘Unlikely. What would be the point? It’s not as if Hadleigh’s breaking the law.’
‘True. The worse that could happen is a few funny looks from the locals. All he’d have to do then is pack his stuff and go back to the Smoke. Nobody cares up there if you’re buggering the goldfish on your night off. Even so,’ Troy stopped his pacing and sat down again, ‘must be relevant, all this clobber. Otherwise why would the murderer take it away?’