‘Sue!’ Amy gripped Sue’s shoulders. ‘You sent for me. And I’m here.’
‘Amy ...’
‘It’s all right.’ She kissed Sue’s icy cheek and felt a muscle twitch and jump. Sue eased herself out of Amy’s arms in an indifferent way, as if resigned to the impossibility of comfort. Amy said again, very gently, ‘Tell me.’
Sue told her. Amy listened, her bottom jaw hanging in disbelief, eyes round as saucers.
‘On the village notice board?’
‘Yes.’
‘But ... who put them there?’
‘God knows. I saw them on my way to play group.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I told you.’ Sue sounded slightly impatient. ‘On the notice board.’
‘What ... still?’
‘Yes.’
‘You left them there?’
‘Yes.’
‘All day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ahhh ...’ Amy covered her mouth to check she was not sure what. A squeal of excited disbelief. A cry of horror. A whoop of satisfaction. Imminent laughter.
As they stared at each other, the frozen surface of Sue’s face started to loosen, crumple, then fall into soft weary folds. She surrendered to a storm of tears. Amy guided her to the sofa, where they both sat down.
‘Angry ...’ wept Sue. ‘So angry.’
‘I should just think you are.’
‘Years of all that ...’
‘There, there.’
‘Non-stop sneering.’
‘I know.’
‘How stupid I am. Not pretty, not sexy. Can’t cook, can’t drive. My painting’s rubbish. I’m a rotten mother—’
‘You’re a wonderful mother.’
‘And all the time ... all the time ...’
Amy waited until Sue became less distraught, then passed over a large silk handkerchief which had belonged to Ralph.
‘Have a good blow.’
Sue trumpeted softly and dried the veil of moisture that had completely covered her face.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Amy reached out and retrieved the ball of wrinkled sog. ‘It’s good to cry.’
As Amy put the handkerchief away and watched Sue become more composed she wondered what would happen next. Had Sue asked her round merely for sympathy and moral support? Or to assist in some specific plan? Whatever it was was fine by Amy. Now that the first ripple of amazement on hearing of the notice board’s farcical and outrageous montage was fading she became aware of her own anger, burning fiercely on Sue’s behalf.
‘Is there anything you want me to do?’
‘Just wait with me until he comes.’
‘Of course I will.’ Amy imagined Brian’s fury should he happen upon this latest news bulletin before arriving home. Always sanctimonious, his ability to instantly rewrite anything that showed him to a disadvantage would surely be strained here to the absolute utmost. And when habitual self-deceivers were forced to face the truth about themselves the consequences could be extremely dangerous. And not just for wild ducks in the attic.
‘Do you think you might weaken and let him in? Is that why you want me to stay?’
‘No.’ Sue spoke from the kitchen, where she was filling her painting jam jar with water. She came back and put it on the table before lighting the lamp. ‘I just want someone here.’
‘Is he violent?’
‘Only inside.’
It was Amy who saw Brian, earlier than expected, getting out of his car and trudging across the Green. By then Sue had finished setting the scene of quiet, creative solitude that her husband observed through the sitting-room window.
Amy held her breath when Sue responded to his urgent rapping by slowly rising, picking up an envelope, leaving the room and, on her return, slowly drawing the curtains.
Amy could not help noticing that, though Sue did this in a calm, controlled way, her head was tilted back at quite a sharp angle. Amy guessed that this was because Sue was afraid to look at Brian, but she was wrong. The truth was that Sue made this avoidance not out of fear but from the certain knowledge that if, even once, she had stared directly into her husband’s eyes she would not be able to stop her fist crashing straight through the glass and into his stupid face.
After a dietetically correct lunch Barnaby returned to the incident room. Although it was barely three o’clock several members of the outdoor team were clocking back in, though Sergeant Troy was not among them. He had been detailed to harass Brian Clapton further, on the principle that the devil a suspect knew was more likely to slip past his defences than a devil he didn’t. Especially if that first devil was already able to scare the shit out of him.
Barnaby was on the point of going over the statement Amy Lyddiard had made in his office for the third time. His previous reading had reactivated that earlier irritating niggle that there was something buried in there that did not quite add up but had not revealed precisely what it was.
He wondered if she had contradicted a remark made earlier, on the morning the murder investigation had begun. That interview would be under ‘Lyddiard, H’, for it was Honoria who had spoken at such domineering and bombastic length. Amy’s contribution, as Barnaby remembered it, had been fragmentary to say the least.
Leaving his own screen, he applied himself to the nearest vacant keyboard and began his search. As he tapped away he was momentarily distracted by thoughts of his bête noir, who had elected at the morning’s post-briefing sort-out to revisit Gresham House. To Barnaby’s deep chagrin the malicious impulse which had prompted him to encourage Meredith to pursue the matter of Honoria’s fingerprints the other day had sharply backfired. The man had returned with the news that, although Miss Lyddiard would, under no circumstances, visit the station, she would be prepared, provided he himself was present at the procedure, to co-operate in this matter at her home.
Barnaby screwed his eyes up against the green dazzle. He recalled Honoria’s responses as completely negative and, as he ran through them, it seemed that he was right. Amy had asked a single tremulous question and offered one contribution and that domestic.
‘I made us a drink, cocoa actually—’
At which point she had been rudely cut short by her sister-in-law. Barnaby saw no significance in this. The interruptive mode of speech was natural to Honoria and he felt it hardly likely that a description of cocoa-making would reveal anything of moment.
The chief inspector slid his mouse about, scrolled back, then highlighted the context of Amy’s remark, starting with his own question to Honoria.
B: Did you retire straight away?
H: Yes. I had a headache. The visitor was allowed to smoke. A disgusting habit. He wouldn’t have done it here.
B: And you, Mrs Lyddiard?
A: Not quite straight away. First I—
Barnaby pushed his chair back in such a hurry it crashed into the desk behind and the policewoman sitting there jumped, staring at him in surprise. Mumbling an apology, he got back to his own machine and quickly found what he was looking for. It was right at the beginning. He had asked Amy if they had gone directly home from Plover’s Rest after the meeting and she had replied:
‘Yes. I made us some hot drinks then went upstairs to work on my book. Honoria took hers into the study.’
Well, it was a discrepancy all right, but a very small one. Very small indeed. In fact, if it were any smaller ... Barnaby felt his growing excitement dim before it had a chance to really get going. For what was in a word? Especially one as flexible as ‘retire’. To some people it could mean disappearing into the bathroom for a good long soak, to others slipping away to the den, pouring a stiff one and putting on the headphones. Why shouldn’t Honoria have used it to mean going into her study to read?