Written in Blood (12 page)

‘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.

Putting Borodino firmly behind them and making their way back to Hadleigh’s cottage Barnaby noticed a woman with a bicycle standing by the gate of the house next door. She had obviously been informed by someone in the crowd that they had been previously seeking her out, for she was looking in a concerned, expectant manner in their direction. Barnaby, fishing for his warrant card, approached.

‘Mrs Clapton?’

‘Yes. What is it?’ Her expression, a little alarmed but plainly anxious to be of help, was a welcome contrast to their last encounter.

‘Could we talk inside, do you think?’

‘Of course.’

The front door opened on to a tiny square of coconut matting directly behind which reared some steep and narrow stairs. The stairwell was painted Prussian blue and covered with stars. Sue showed them into an untidy sitting room where, after asking permission, Barnaby sank, swiftly and gratefully, into a deep armchair from which, when the time came, he could hardly extricate himself. Troy settled himself at a table affixed to a single barley-sugar-twist leg. The whole thing had such a severe wobble that he ended up balancing his notebook on his knee.

‘Is it about Gerald?’ She was breathing quickly and her eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘People on the pavement were saying all sorts of things. That he’d had an accident. Even that he’d . . . died.’

‘I’m afraid that is the case, Mrs Clapton. But it was not an accident. Mr Hadleigh was deliberately killed.’

The colour leached from her face and flooded uncontrollably back, swoosh, a crimson tide. Then she hung her head, her expression invisible behind a fall of hair. After a few moments she sat up, appearing more composed. Her complexion stabilised at a shade resembling pale tea.

‘But we were all together - our Writers Circle. We had a lovely time.’ She sounded completely bewildered and also slightly resentful, as if the very loveliness of the time should itself have proved an amulet against disaster.

‘You met regularly, I believe?’

‘Yes. Every month.’ She was gazing now at her clogs. Clumsy things painted with little flowers and worn with woollen socks. ‘Gerald . . .
Gerald
. . .’

‘You can’t think of anyone who would wish to harm Mr Hadleigh?’

‘What do you mean?’ She looked from one man to the other in amazement. ‘Surely it was a burglar? A break-in?’

‘We are of course considering that possibility.’ Barnaby was at his most avuncular. ‘How long have you been neighbours?’

‘Since we moved here. About five years ago.’

‘You’d know Mr Hadleigh quite well, then?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He was always polite and helpful. A good sort to live next to - cleared the snow last winter when Brian did his back in. That sort of thing. But he wasn’t what you’d call revealing.’

‘But you met socially?’

‘Only at the group. We didn’t mix otherwise. Brian wouldn’t have liked it.’

‘Why not?’

‘He just doesn’t care for . . . that class of person.’

Well there’s a turn-around, thought Troy. Mindful of the recent ticking-off his voice was politely neutral as he asked, ‘What class would that be, Mrs Clapton?’

‘“Officer class” was how Brian described it. Not that Gerald had been in the Forces. I got the impression he was a retired civil servant. It’s just Brian’s way of putting things. He’s a socialist.’ She squared her shoulders slightly and lifted her chin as if bravely confessing to some shameful peccadillo as, around Midsomer Worthy, it probably was. ‘People are pretty good about it on the whole.’

‘How did your writers’ group get on together?’

‘Fine. Mainly.’

‘But there must have been likes and dislikes. The occasional disagreements. Jealousy perhaps over a member’s success.’

‘Oh no. We weren’t professionals.’

Touché, thought Barnaby, before realising the remark had been made in all innocence. ‘Were you all working on different things?’

‘Yes. Gerald wrote short stories, Amy’s working on a novel . . .’

As Barnaby listened he took in his surroundings. Two walls were emulsioned a hot, sandy orange, one terracotta, the fourth the same colour as the stairwell, minus the nebulae but with the addition of a stately and rather beautiful palm tree. A black frieze, in a Greek-key pattern, had been painted beneath the picture rail. It all reminded Barnaby of a visit he and Joyce had paid to Knossos. There was a wooden clothes-horse from which depended several bunches of slowly drying flowers and herbs. The carpet was wall-to-wall muesli. Sue continued talking.

‘. . .
Night of the Hyena
. I can’t relate to it at all. Guns, bombs, rockets - that’s men’s stuff, isn’t it? Just silliness. Except in real life of course, when they go off and kill people.’

‘Did you always meet at Mr Hadleigh’s?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Yes. Laura’s house is tiny, Rex’s a bit of a mess. Brian didn’t want them here and Honoria grumbled about it being too much trouble. Actually Amy said it was because she didn’t want to have to pay for the coffee and biscuits - oh! You won’t tell . . .’

‘No worries on that score, Mrs Clapton,’ said Troy with a sympathetic smile.

Sue smiled shyly back. She took off her glasses, which she hated, and rested them in her lap. The lenses were thick as the bottoms of milk bottles. Sue dreamed of one day seeing a film where, after first letting her hair down, the hero remove the heroine’s glasses and says, ‘Hey . . . know what? You look better with them on.’

Barnaby said, ‘I understand you had a guest speaker yesterday.’

‘A rare treat. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to get people considering we’re under an hour from central London.’

‘But this time you struck lucky?’

‘Yes. Everyone was surprised when he accepted. And he was so nice. Not a bit grand. Gave us all sorts of advice and tips. And he really listened, you know?’

‘So the evening was a success?’ She nodded vigorously.

‘No tensions or cross currents that you noticed?’

‘Only Gerald.’ Her face changed as she remembered what had momentarily been crowded out. ‘He hardly spoke, which was surprising. I thought he’d be asking lots of questions because he so much wanted to succeed. He would work over and over his writing trying to make it better.’

‘Was he any good?’ asked Troy.

Sue hesitated. Knowing it was wrong to speak ill of the dead she was certain it could not then be right to speak ill of their achievements. On the other hand she always tried to be honest and it wasn’t as if, in this case, the truth would hurt anyone. Least of all poor Gerald.

‘When Gerald read his stories out they sounded fine. He’d learned how to do it, you see, from all his books. But the minute he’d finished you couldn’t remember a word he’d said.’ This devastating indictment concluded, she suddenly got up as if remembering her manners.

‘I should have made you some tea,’ she said, plucking apologetically at the rainbow laces in her waistcoat.

‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Clapton.’ Barnaby’s hope of a biscuit was more than realised. A cake tin arrived with the tea and it was suggested that he helped himself.

‘Why are you asking so many questions about us?’ said Sue, handing around large mugs.

‘Just background. I understand Mr Jennings didn’t leave with the rest of you.’

‘No - it was funny, that. Brian made the first move, Gerald got the coats and it looked as if there was going to be a general exodus but then, when we were all halfway out the door, Max Jennings sat down again.’

‘Did you get the impression that was a deliberate manoeuvre?’ asked Troy.

‘I don’t think so. Just one of those awkward moments.’

‘Wouldn’t have taken you long to get home,’ said Barnaby. She didn’t reply but watched him with unnaturally close attention, like a participant in a quiz game expecting a trick question. ‘Did you go out again at all?’

‘No.’

‘Either of you?’ She frowned and covered her eyes with her hand as if needing to think. The movement was quick, but not quite quick enough for Barnaby to miss the flare of emotion. Stronger than concern or apprehension. Alarm perhaps. Fear even.

‘It was a bit late for that.’

‘Walking the dog maybe,’ said Troy, leaning forward - for he too sensed they were on fertile ground.

‘We haven’t got a dog.’

She elaborated quickly, using stiff little sentences looping round each other. Brian had gone up straight away. She had had things to get ready for play group. Plus some washing up from Mandy’s supper. Brian was well away by the time she got to bed. She herself couldn’t get to sleep. Too excited by the evening. But Brian, he was asleep the minute his head touched the pillow. And so on and tortuously on.

Barnaby listened, not unsympathetically, for he was aware of her dilemma. Unbrazen people who had something, by no means necessarily criminal, to hide either froze into protective stillness or talked non-stop about anything and everything to keep their tongue from alighting on the matter for concealment. Needing to move things along, he interrupted.

‘Perhaps, being awake, you heard Mr Jennings drive away?’

‘Yes.’ It was one long gasp of relief. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Do you happen to know when that was?’

‘I’m afraid not. You know how it is, lying in the dark. Time passes at a funny rate.’

‘Sure it was Mr Jennings’ car?’ asked Troy.

‘I can’t imagine who else’s it could have been. It had a very powerful engine and seemed to be revving up practically under our window.’

‘But you didn’t look out?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Mrs Clapton.’ Barnaby now entered upon his marathon struggle to part company from the fierce embrace of the armchair. ‘No, no. It’s all right. I can manage.’

‘We called on Mr St John,’ said Troy, averting his eyes for fear of laughter, ‘but he was out.’

‘Yes. It’s market day. He draws his pension and does the shopping and then his research at the library. Goes in at nine and catches the four o’clock bus back. You won’t find Laura at home either. She opens her shop at ten so she’d probably have left home before all this was discovered.’

‘What shop would that be?’ asked Sergeant Troy, closing his notebook.

‘The Spinning Wheel. Antiques. In Causton High Street.’

Barnaby, now fully upright, recognised the name. He had bought Joyce an outrageously priced Victorian footstool there for her birthday last year.

‘I shall have to ask you for some fingerprints I’m afraid, Mrs Clapton. Purely for purposes of elimination.’

‘Oh dear.’ Worry shadowed her eyes, which, without the hugely magnifying lenses, were small, blinky and weak as a rabbit’s. ‘My husband wouldn’t like that. He’s very into civil liberties.’

‘They’ll just be on a strip - not filed. And destroyed when our investigations are complete. In your presence, if that is what you would prefer.’

‘I see.’

‘There’s a portable incident room on the Green, as I expect you noticed.’ Barnaby spoke firmly, as if her popping in was as good as settled. ‘Or you and Mr Clapton might like to come to the station.’

By now they had reached the door. Fastened to one of the stripped wooden panels by Blu-tack was a painting of a dragon. His tail was wrapped around his body, the arrowed tip covering his nostrils and held in place by a wing membrane. Above his head in primary colours were the words: ‘Thank You For Not Smoking In Our Home’.

The creature’s expression of guilty naughtiness, alarm at being discovered and a lurking, laughing confidence that it would be forgiven was so precisely that of a well-loved child caught in similar defiant circumstances that Troy chuckled silently and Barnaby laughed out loud.

‘Who did this?’

‘Me. That’s Hector.’

‘It’s very good.’

‘Thank you.’ Sue blushed with pleasure. ‘He’s in all my stories.’

‘Do you ever sell your paintings, Mrs Clapton?’ asked Troy.

‘Ohh . . . well . . .’ Her face became transfigured.

‘Only my little girl, she’d just love him. In her room like.’

‘I could . . . I suppose . . . Yes.’

‘Fine. I’ll be in touch.’

They were all on the step by this time. As Barnaby and Troy left, Kitty Fosse, now in the company of two more reporters, both male, a man with a camera on his shoulder and a woman waving a long cylinder of yellow fluff pushed through the gate and zoomed, like a swarm of hornets, up the path. The policemen stood aside, judging, correctly, that their target was Sue.

‘So,’ said the chief inspector as they walked away. ‘What do you make of all that, sergeant?’

‘Covering for him, isn’t she?’

‘It looks like it. I wonder what Mr C. was actually up to while he was supposed to be “well away” last night.’

‘The smart move would be to talk to him before she does.’ Barnaby turned for a last look at Trevelyan Villas. The Press had disappeared inside. ‘And if you can get us to Causton Comprehensive within the next twenty minutes I’d say we have a very good chance of doing just that.’

‘On these roads?’ They had reached the car. Troy struggled to open the door which had frozen to the frame. He grinned. ‘No problem.’

 

In the gymnasium Brian was organising his play-construction group. Everyone but Denzil was spread around on the high-gloss, honey-coloured parquet. They sat cross-legged and back to back or lay acumbent. Denzil hung upside down from the ropes, his hands gripping and squeezing the rubber rings. Veins corded his neck and sweat hung from his lobes like drops of crystal.