The Killings at Badger's Drift (15 page)

Remembering Mrs Rainbird’s remark about the iron, Barnaby was expecting to see some dramatic and livid mutilation but, at first glance, Michael Lacey’s face seemed completely unmarked. Then Barnaby noticed that from the top of the left cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth the skin was unnaturally tight; glassy sugar-pig pink skin. It must have been some burn to have needed a graft that size. As well as good looks (which the strangely shining strip of skin hardly seemed to mar) he exuded crackling sardonic masculinity. Not warmth, though. Michael Lacey would organize the world and its inhabitants to suit himself. Barnaby felt sorry for Judy Lessiter. And even, come to that, for the repellent Mr Rainbird.

He said, ‘May we come in for a moment?’

‘What do you want?’

‘We’re police officers -’

‘So you’re police officers. What am I supposed to do? Run up a flag?’

‘We’re visiting everyone in the village -’

‘I don’t live in the village. I’m amazed that your deductive powers have led you to believe that I do.’

‘- and the surrounding area. This is quite usual, Mr Lacey, during a general -’

‘Look. I’m sorry about Miss Simpson. I liked her. But I take no part in village affairs, as any of the local gossips will confirm. And now you’ll have to excuse me -’

‘We won’t keep you a moment, sir.’ Barnaby moved forward very slightly and Michael Lacey stepped back very slightly, just enough to let the two men enter the cottage. Uncarpeted stairs were directly to the left of him and he sat on them, leaving the other two standing.

‘Did you know Miss Simpson well?’

‘I don’t know anyone well. She let me do a series of paintings of her garden . . . different times of the year . . . but that was ages ago. I hadn’t seen her for . . . ohh . . . a couple of months at least.’ He gazed at the chief inspector, alert, detached, a little amused, deciding to treat this enforced interruption as an entertainment.

‘Could you tell me where you were on the afternoon and evening of last Friday?’

‘Here.’

‘Well that’s certainly a prompt reply, Mr Lacey. Don’t you need to reflect at all?’

‘No. I’m always here. Working. Sometimes I take a break to walk in the woods.’

‘And did you walk in the woods that day?’ inquired Barnaby.

‘I may have done. I really don’t remember. As all my days are the same I don’t need to keep a diary.’

‘It seems rather a dull life for a young man.’

Michael Lacey looked at his bare feet. They were beautiful feet: long, narrow, elegant, with papery skin and fine bones. Byzantine feet. Then he looked directly at Barnaby and said, ‘My work is my life.’ He spoke quietly but with such a charge of passionate conviction that Barnaby, dabbler in watercolours, casual member of the Causton Arts Circle, felt a stab of envy. He then told himself that conviction didn’t mean talent, as many an exposure to Joyce’s drama group had confirmed. Armed with this rather churlish perception, he said, ‘There are one or two more questions, Mr Lacey, if you wouldn’t mind -’

‘But I do mind. I hate being interrupted.’

‘I understand,’ continued Barnaby smoothly, ‘that you were present when the late Mrs Trace was killed.’

‘Bella?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Yes I was but I can’t see . . .’ He paused. ‘You don’t think there’s any connection . . . ?’ His previous animosity seemed forgotten. He looked genuinely interested. ‘No . . . how could there be?’

‘I gather from the newspaper report that you were the first person to reach Mrs Trace.’

‘That’s right. Lessiter said not to touch her but to run and ring for an ambulance, which I did.’

‘Was there anyone at Tye House at the time?’

‘Only Katherine. Toadying away like mad.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In the kitchen making sandwiches, stuffing vol au vents, chopping up hunter’s pie.’

‘Whilst you were helping with the beating.’

‘That’s different. I was being paid!’ Barnaby’s dig stung the anger back into his voice. He confirmed that no one in the party had been in a position to shoot Mrs Trace, then said, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me. I didn’t even have a gun.’

‘I understand that you and the other beater searched for the cartridge afterwards?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that. We had a cursory poke round but it seemed so pointless that we soon gave up.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lacey.’

As the two policemen climbed into the car Troy, remembering his earlier gaffe about the Rover, strove to think of something perceptive and intelligent to say. ‘Did you notice that he locked the door of the room where he was painting? I thought that was a bit strange.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Creative people often have an intensely protective attitude about work in progress. Look at Jane Austen’s creaking door.’

Sergeant Troy reversed, using a large, double-sided mirror which had been fixed in the hedge, giving a view of the approaching path and the front of the cottage. ‘That’s a point, sir,’ he replied. There was no way he was going to let on he knew nothing of Jane Austen’s creaking door. As for Michael Lacey being love’s young dream, well . . . He glanced in the mirror and briefly smoothed his carrot-coloured hair. Surely it was only in romantic novels that girls preferred dark men.

 

Michael Lacey watched from the porch while the car drove away then returned to his studio. He picked up his palette and brush, stared at the easel for a moment, then put them down again. The light was dying. In spite of the recent interruption he had had a good day. Sometimes he worked in a fury of resentment; tearing up sketches, painting over scenes that would not come right in a frenzy, occasionally weeping with rage. But days like that paid for days like this. From the striving came, sometimes, a marvellous and felicitous ease. He studied the figure in the painting. There was still a lot to do. He had put on the dead colour, that was all. But he was excited by it. He had the absolute conviction that it was going to be successful. It was tremendous when that happened. The belief that, no matter what he did, how he approached it, whatever the technique, it was going to work. His conviction was so strong that he felt he couldn’t spoil it even if he tried.

He went to the kitchen and opened a can of baked beans and sausages and, spooning them into his mouth, returned to his workroom. The fading light appeared to alter the shape of the place, made the walls shifting and amorphous. Four vast abstracts covered with thick white paint loomed at him from a few feet away. In the corner of each was a dark, imploding star, now no more than a smudge in the crepuscular light.

On top of the corner cupboard was an old-fashioned pewter student’s lamp. He lit the candle and wandered round the room looking at the many canvases stacked against the walls. Although there was a strong fluorescent strip light on the ceiling Michael Lacey loved the effect of candles. Colours on the paintings became richer, many-layered; eyes seemed to flicker and mouths twitch with the illusion of light. Solid flesh was transformed into something rare and delicate. The effect was stimulating and seemed to fill his mind with wonderful and subtle ideas.

In the corner cupboard was a pile of paperbacks and art catalogues, all well thumbed, the spines cracked and, in some cases, broken. He pulled one out at random and sat contemplating a plate by Botticelli. How seductive, he thought, the tender vivacious faces adorned with fresh spring flowers. He finished the beans and sat for a moment longer utterly content, imagining himself walking round the Uffizi, standing in homage in front of the original. Then he opened the window, threw up the tin and kicked it, a shining arc, through the window and into the night.

Late that evening Barnaby sat toying with a salad. He had deliberately stayed on at the station, looking through the pro-formas as they appeared in his tray, until he felt dinner would be beyond redemption and a tin opened with no hard feelings. He had forgotten there were such things as tomatoes and cucumber and beetroot . . .

One would have thought that not even Joyce could have maltreated a salad to the point where it became inedible, but one would have been wrong. Abustle with wild life, it was also soaked in a vinegary dressing. Barnaby lifted a soggy lettuce leaf. A small insect emerged, valiantly swimming against the tide.

‘It’s Bakewell Surprise for afters,’ she called from the kitchen, doubly percipient. He was hungry too. This last phenomenon always surprised him. It was rather touching, really: no matter how much stick he gave his stomach there it was, a few hours later, hopeful if apprehensive, wondering if this time its luck would change.

‘And Cully’s coming next weekend.’ She gave him the tart, a cup of tea and a fond kiss. ‘All right?’

‘Lovely. How long for?’

‘Just till Sunday teatime.’

Barnaby and Joyce looked at each other. They both loved and were immensely proud of their only child. And they both thought it much nicer when she was not at home. Neither of them ever said so. Even when quite small Cully had had a sharp eye and an unkind tongue. Both had become more finely honed with the passing years. Outstanding at school, she was now reading English at New Hall and confidently expected to get a good second in spite of the fact that she seemed to Barnaby to spend all her time rehearsing some play or other.

‘Will you be able to pick her up on Saturday?’

‘Not sure.’ Barnaby put his Bakewell Surprise to the sword, which was more than it deserved, and wondered what his daughter would be next seen wearing. She had always dressed in a provoking manner but he and Joyce had assumed, seeing her off on the Cambridge train, that the days of dishcloth and safety-pin skirts and tie and dye makeup were over (indeed they half expected her to be sent smartly home again) but each brief and infrequent visit since had presented them with ever more exotic and alarming transformations. The nice thing about these occasions was that having left home, as she put it, whilst she still had her health and strength, Cully protected these twin assets by always arriving with a goodly supply of gorgeous food from Marks and Spencers and Joshua Taylor’s deli.

‘You won’t forget to ring your father?’

Barnaby took his tea and sat by the fireplace. As he had been ringing his parents once a week for a quarter of a century he’d hardly be likely to. They were both in their eighties and had retired to just outside Eastbourne twenty years before. There they inhaled the ozone, played bowls and gardened, as spry as tinkers.

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Do it now before you settle down.’

‘I have settled down.’

‘Then you can enjoy your tea.’

Barnaby dutifully hauled himself out of his chair. His mother answered the phone and, after a token inquiry about his own health and that of his family, launched into an account of her week which included a splendid row at the Arts Circle when a nonagenarian had suggested a life class. She ended, as she always did, by saying, ‘I’ll just call Daddy.’

Barnaby senior then described his week which had included a splendid row at a meeting of the preservation society over a Victorian bandstand. What a bellicose lot they were down there, thought Barnaby who, when his parents had moved, had pictured them passing their hours dozing peacefully in their conservatory. A rather unsound piece of image-making, he now admitted. They had never been the dozing kind. His father finished describing how he had finally scuppered an unscrupulous opponent on the bowling green.

Barnaby listened patiently then said, almost as an afterthought, ‘Never mind. We’re in the middle of the cricket season. I expect you’re glued to the set most days.’

‘Certainly am. Rented one of those video gadgets. Play back the best bits. Terrible about Friday, wasn’t it?’

Barnaby smiled indulgently. His father must know that he was never around in the daytime to watch cricket, yet always assumed he knew exactly what was being discussed.

‘What happened?’

‘Why, no match, dear boy. Not enough light. The umpire offered Allenby the option and he decided to stop play. Eleven ack-emma. Everything was ready this end. Cucumber sandwiches, jug of mint tea. Settled in for the duration. We were totally distraught. Well, to be honest, your mother wasn’t too bothered but it did for my day, I can tell you.’

After due commiserations Barnaby returned to his armchair and a fresh cup of tea. ‘People have started lying to me, Joyce.’

‘Oh yes, dear . . .’ The pale silky knitting grew. ‘In this business at Badger’s Drift, you mean?’

‘Mm. Katherine Lacey was seen in the village during the evening she said she didn’t go out. Judy Lessiter said she was at work all afternoon and was seen in the village shop at half-past three. Trevor Lessiter said he was at home watching cricket . . . “superb bowling” . . . and the match was cancelled. And Phyllis Cadell went rigid with fright when she saw us, then tried to cover it by some silly story about her road tax.’

‘Goodness . . . that seems plenty to be going on with.’ The names meant nothing to Joyce Barnaby and she knew Tom was really only thinking aloud, getting his thoughts into some sort of order. She listened intently all the same.

‘And Barbara Lessiter, the esteemed doctor’s wife, had something in this morning’s mail that turned her white as a sheet.’

‘How do you know?’ Barnaby told her. ‘Oh - it’s probably a final demand. I expect she’s been buying clothes and run up a terrible bill somewhere.’

‘No.’ Barnaby shook his head. ‘It was something more than that. And where was she the night Emily Simpson died? Driving round. Very vague.’

‘But innocent people are vague. They don’t always have alibis. Or know precisely what they were doing and when. You’ve always said that. What was she doing in the afternoon?’

‘Shopping in Causton.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Joyce, irrefutably. ‘She’s been overspending.’

Barnaby smiled across at her, drained his cup and replaced it in the saucer. Something told him that it was not that simple. That none of it was going to be that simple.