The women were looking expectant but, remembering what Amy had so recently gone through, Rex thought it wiser to keep his newly found discovery to himself.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite get the question.’
‘We wondered,’ said Amy, ‘why you were looking so happy.’
‘Oh, just life you know.’ Rex beamed at them both. ‘Just life.’
Then he touched his battered cord cap and walked away, Montcalm prancing and dancing at his heels.
Laura, studying her reflection in the Venetian glass in her yellow silk sitting room was well pleased. She looked beautiful, confident and, most surprising of all, happy. She, who had thought never to be happy again.
Turning slowly round, looking backwards over her shoulder, she admired her profile, noting with special pleasure the delicate, trembling sprays of diamonds in her ears. Her heavy mass of bronze hair falling around her shoulders, was held back by two pearl and marcasite combs. Laura thought she looked rather like a Burne Jones voluptuary, and smiled. She adjusted the accordian-pleated collar on her cape of heavy taffeta so that it framed her face. She was going to see Der Rosenkavalier and already her head was filled with music.
There was a spritzer of white wine and Pellegrino to hand. She had kept two goblets behind in case Adrian, one time owner of the Irish linen cupboard, decided to join her. He always got out of the car and came to the door. Never just sat there and tooted. She liked that. Laura drank a little and put the glass back carelessly, making yet another ring. The mantelpiece already looked like an Olympic logo.
Around her, as in every room in the house, were tea chests, cardboard boxes and shrouded pieces of furniture. Tomorrow she would be shaking the village dust from her feet. And not a moment too soon. Not that she had been there much recently. She had been staying with friends in Stoke Poges supervising work on her new house, which was close by, and paying only fleeting visits to Midsomer Worthy to pick up her mail and check for messages on the answerphone.
There had been several from Amy. They indicated a wish for a meeting so that she could express her gratitude to Laura for having saved her life. After the third of these embarrassingly tense communications, Laura had sent a postcard to say that it was really quite unnecessary and that, largely due to the move, she had very little time to spare. The hint seemed to have been taken for, even when her Porsche had been parked in the driveway, Amy had not stopped by.
The last thing Laura wanted was to be reminded of the gruesome tragicomedy she had witnessed at Gresham House. Afterwards, when the police had taken her to the station, they had insisted on giving her strong sweet tea which she hadn’t wanted but which they kept saying was good for shock. Laura had tried to explain that everything had happened so quickly she had not had time to be shocked.
After smashing some glass and climbing through the gap she had run upstairs to the room from where she judged the screams to be coming. The second she dashed in Honoria had released Amy, crossed quickly to the open window, sat down on the sill and fallen backwards. One moment her legs were sticking stiffly upside down in the air and the next she had gone. She did not cry out, either when she fell or when she hit the ground. It was all over in an instant.
Laura still hadn’t grasped all the ins and outs of what had been going on and wasn’t sure she wanted to. All she really understood was that her decision to call on Amy instead of ringing up to propose that they meet elsewhere, as Chief Inspector Barnaby had suggested, was, in retrospect, a very good thing. She never had got a look at the picture in Amy’s locket, supposedly the point of the whole exercise, but had been assured that this no longer signified. Now all she wanted was to put the whole messy business out of her mind, which she had succeeded in doing pretty well.
She was especially surprised at the rapid transformation of her feelings for Gerald Hadleigh. (She always used his surname now when referring to him in her thoughts.) Quite soon after being told about his strange double life and homosexuality the obsessional passion that had once so dominated her life had completely and mysteriously vanished. She seemed, like Titania, to have been released from some mysterious spell.
Laura wondered if this quick and easy recovery meant she was rather a shallow person and the thought was not entirely unpleasing. Certainly in many respects, the shallow seemed to have a far easier time of it.
The distinctive roar of a Jensen cut through these pleasant musings. Laura picked up her bag. On the way out she paused before her quattrocento princeling and frowned at his melancholy countenance. Always close to her heart today, for the first time, she felt irritation and wondered if she had not perhaps been too indulgent in inventing so many assorted tragedies to explain his mood. He was probably just having an adolescent sulk. Laura patted his hand and said, ‘Cheer up. It might never happen.’
The doorbell rang. He was here. She reached for the little gilt chain which hung down by the side of the painting. Pulled it. And put out the light.