Written in Blood (22 page)

Invited to sit, Barnaby lowered himself with immense care on to a Regency cane sofa. Beside him was a papiermâché card table inlaid with mother-of-pearl on which were a swansdown waistcoat under a glass dome and a jasper chess set. Troy sat on what looked to him like a section of some old choir stalls and marvelled that he should ever see the day.

Laura asked if they would care for a drink then, the offer being refused, poured herself half a tumbler from a Georgian decanter. The warm, peaty smell of excellent whisky pervaded the room. She started to drink it immediately. No casual sipping here. Or pretence that she was indulging merely to be sociable.

Barnaby was reminded of Mrs Jennings. Expensive cut-glass misery was apparently fashionable everywhere. Not that the present situation was without its satisfactions, for nothing loosened the tongue like a drop of the hard stuff and she was already pouring a second.

‘I can’t imagine how I can help you any further, chief inspector.’ She had put her tumbler down on the marble mantelpiece and picked up an enamelled vinaigrette which she handled nervously, fiddling with the stopper and the fine-linked chain. ‘I told you what little I knew yesterday.’

‘Not quite, perhaps.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sounded aggressive, which was bad news so early in the interview. What he was after was alcoholic reminiscence and careless recollection, not boozy defiance.

‘Please don’t misunderstand me, Mrs Hutton. I’m not at all suggesting that you’ve concealed anything that has a bearing on the case. What I’d like to ask you about, if I may, is your connection with Gerald Hadleigh.’

‘There was no connection! I told you yesterday. We only met at the writers’ group. How many more times.’ She seized the glass again and the golden liquid slopped and trembled.

‘Perhaps I should have said,’ Barnaby’s voice was softly apologetic, ‘your feelings for Mr Hadleigh.’

A pause. She looked everywhere but at him. Her glances, swift as the flight of birds, darted to every corner of the room, glanced off the ceiling.

‘You were seen, Mrs Hutton,’ said Troy. ‘Late at night, loitering in his garden.’

He caught the almost imperceptible shake of his superior’s head a second too late and retreated into a cross silence. He was always doing that, the chief. Did it yesterday with that cleaning woman in the kitchen. It was a bit much. Any distressed females to be interviewed and Troy was judged surplus to requirements. He found it deeply offensive. As if he had no compassion. As if delicacy and sensitivity had somehow been missed out of his make-up. Hit the spot with this one all right though. She was looking as if someone had clouted her round the chops with a brick.

‘Oh, God.’ Laura’s expression, by no means calmly ordered in the first place, became even more disturbed. ‘It’ll be all around the bloody village. At least Honoria never gossips.’

‘Miss Lyddiard is aware—?’

‘She barged in here the day of the murder. Quite disgusted to find me in my dressing gown at eleven a.m. Not to mention bawling my head off. Who is this other person . . . ?’

‘Someone walking their dog. We didn’t get a name,’ he lied.

‘So you follow up anonymous rumours? Charming.’ But the hostility had gone from her. She looked tired, slightly bewildered and in dire need of further recourse to the grain.

‘It was the night before Mr Hadleigh died, Mrs Hutton. Quite late.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Barnaby stretched his legs out over the smoke-blue carpet. Another couple of feet and his boots would be touching the opposite wall. He waited and felt like Alice, growing.

‘I’m divorced, you know.’ She sounded defensive, as if he had accused her of old-maid deprivation. ‘Got married, stayed married, got unmarried. All with no more discomfort than a mild toothache. I didn’t know what love was until I saw Gerald. I curse the day I came to live here.’

She poured slightly less this time. Barnaby, concerned, sympathetic, kept his glance fixed on her face. He could see she wanted to talk and suspected that, once started, there’d be no stopping her, but she was not yet irrevocably set upon that path. He caught her eye and smiled encouragingly but she seemed to have forgotten he was there. All to the good.

‘I fell totally and absolutely. At first sight, like a teenager. I thought of nothing else. Saw his face everywhere. Lay on my bed and dreamt about him. Wrote long mad letters which I burned. He said once, casually, that he liked yellow. I went out and bought masses of yellow clothes that I look hideous in. I even had this room done in case he ever came to the house. When I discovered he was a widower I was so happy. I could see he was reserved but I thought I could easily overcome that. I’m not used to failure in these matters.’

Barnaby could believe that. Even now, wretchedly miserable and unmade-up, the face beneath the tousled mass of burnished hair was very attractive.

‘I wangled an invitation for a meal,
à deux
as I thought, at his house. Went along, all dressed up like the dog’s dinner. Half the street was there.’ She laughed, an ugly, tearing sound. ‘Even then I didn’t give up. Told myself that on that first occasion he had needed people round him. That he was shy. So, a few weeks later, I tried again. He’d mentioned once that he was fond of Victorian paintings. I had a small oil in the shop - a rather sentimental fireside scene, late 19th century. I wrapped it up and took it round one afternoon. Tea time.

‘I knew, as soon as he opened the door, that I’d made a mistake. He showed me into the kitchen, looked at the picture and admired it but said he didn’t really have the wall space. We staggered through a bit of quite artificial conversation, then someone came to the door. It was Honoria, wanting some smilax for the church. Gerald was so relieved at the interruption. If it hadn’t been so painful it would have been funny. He went off with her into the garden and started snipping at green stuff. They seemed to be good for a few minutes.

‘I didn’t plan to run upstairs, yet suddenly I was there. I suppose I must have seen it as a chance to find out more about him. Where he slept, what sort of soap he used - stupid things like that. I remember I took his pyjamas from under the pillow and held them against my face. Opened the wardrobe, ran my hands over his clothes. All the while going back and forth to the window checking they were still busy outside. In a chest of drawers I found a shoe box full of photographs. I lifted them up and took one. From the bottom, thinking he’d be less likely to notice. As I was putting it down my bra I heard their voices coming closer to the house. I ran downstairs, bundled up my painting, called goodbye through the kitchen door and left.’ She paused, rolling her glass between the palms of her hands, swilling the liquid.

‘I gave up then. Not loving him - would that I could! But trying to force any sort of intimacy. I was afraid if I pushed things too far he might leave the group and then I’d never see him at all. So that’s how things were for months, then, gradually, human nature being what it is I suppose, hope returned. I knew about Grace of course, how happy they’d been, but nobody can mourn forever. And I was greatly consoled and comforted by the fact that, if he didn’t want me, at least he didn’t appear to want anyone else. Or so I thought.’

The ensuing silence went on for a long time, yet Barnaby was loath to break it. She had withdrawn totally and was staring into the speckled but extremely grand Venetian mirror over the fireplace, frowningly perturbed, as if the person looking back at her was a stranger. He hoped all these painful recollections had not brought some immovable portcullis clanging down in her mind leaving her beyond the reach of his questions and immune to all persuasion. He was on the point of interrogatively reprising her final remark when she started to speak again.

‘I’d started haunting the house. It was a compulsion. A drug, I’d go there after dark hoping to catch sight of him through the window. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone saw me, but I couldn’t stop. I felt there must be another side to him - no one could be that starchy and formal all the time. I thought if I could discover what it was it would help me reach him. Well, I got more than I bargained for.’ The nearness of revelation stretched her flat, colourless voice taut as a drumskin.

‘I was looking into the kitchen, loathing myself for the awful indignity of it, as I always did, when I heard a car draw up at the front of the house. I ran into the trees at the side of the house and saw a woman getting out of a taxi. She paid off the cab then knocked at the door. It opened and she went inside. I was devastated. I saw her through the sitting-room curtains. Very elegant, black suit, long fair hair. He’d given her some wine and she was lifting her glass to him,
lifting it
. . .’

Laura swung her own glass high and whisky flew about, splashing the looking glass. Some droplets fell on her face. She stared around the room. Her eyes were vague and dull with rings beneath them the colour of fresh bruises. Seeing that she was on the point of passing out, Barnaby got up quickly and took her arm.

‘Come and sit down, Mrs Hutton.’ He had to put his arm around her once she had released the mantelpiece. She was a dead weight. He guided her to a low nursing chair. ‘Would you like us to make you some coffee?’

‘. . . coffee . . .’

Barnaby nodded at his sergeant and Troy went off reluctantly to find the kitchen. Once there he searched for a jar of instant in vain but did discover a box of Sainsbury’s individual filters. This was a relief, for he did not relish messing about with some complicated and no doubt expensive equipment, with perhaps disastrous results.

Common or garden mugs seemed to be at a premium, but there were some cups hanging from the shelves of the dresser. Troy took them down with great care. The handles were shaped like harps and there were apricots and walnuts and pale green, delicately veined leaves painted on the bottom. The cups were translucent and shallow, more like dishes really. Troy held one up to the light, squinting appreciatively before putting it tenderly down on the matching saucer and filling the kettle.

Even before the coffee came Laura Hutton was recovering. Barnaby watched her in the glow of the lamp dredging up the energy to reassemble her wits and gather her diffused attention. He could see she already regretted her rash revelations. The baring of her romantic soul. People always did. When he put another question (Did she see the visitor leave?) she replied, tartly, ‘What do you think? I couldn’t get home fast enough.’

‘And did you go out again, Mrs Hutton?’

‘Absolutely not.’

He let things ride for a few minutes after that, sitting silently, looking around the room at the books and ornaments. It was all so perfect, like an expertly assembled set for a period drama. Only the clothes were wrong. She should have been in high button boots and leg-of-mutton braided sleeves, he in a celluloid wing collar with a curly brimmed bowler balanced on his knee. She was talking again.

‘I cheered myself up briefly by deciding she was a pro. An escort, as I believe they now call themselves. Or is it masseuse? I mean - turning up in a taxi at that hour.’

‘More than likely, Mrs Hutton.’

‘Oh - do you think so?’ The note of dull fatalism had vanished. She sounded hopeful, even excited. As if it could possibly matter now. ‘Actually, I know this’ll sound unlikely - but she seemed to remind me of someone.’

‘Oh?’ Barnaby looked up sharply. ‘Who was that?’

‘I couldn’t think at first. The feeling was so certain but though I went over and over it in my mind the answer escaped me. I ran back to the house - obviously sleep was out of the question - and was sitting in here bawling my head off when it came to me. And it wasn’t a person at all.’ She smiled for the first time and pointed over Barnaby’s left shoulder. ‘It was that.’

He got up and turned round. Hanging behind him on the wall was a painting - a large portrait, ornately framed, of a boy who appeared, from the elaborate richness of his apparel, to be a fifteenth-century princeling. A heavy velvet cloak of russet and silver was folded over one slim shoulder and secured with some sort of papal decoration. His slashed doublet was thickly embroidered with pearls and golden thread. There were pearl drops in his ears too, and he wore a russet velvet cap which had a speckled feather curving across his cheek.

Beside him was a table holding an astrolabe and an exquisitely painted mask on a stick. In the background was a dark landscape of wooded hills cleanly divided by a silken waterfall. An angel, bright-winged, posed rather stiffly in the air and looked sternly down in the rather directorial way that angels have. A ray of grace beamed from its hand. The whole scene was bathed in a soft, feathery light. In the bottom right-hand corner were the initials ‘H.C.’.

‘I bought it twelve years ago in Dublin,’ said Laura. ‘A sale of country house furniture. Cost me all I had, but I told myself I’d eventually make a profit, or at least get my money back. In the event I could never bring myself to part with him.’

She had moved to stand beside Barnaby during this speech and reached out now, laying the tips of her fingers on the heavily beringed hand of the boy. The whole painting was crazed and spidery cracks ran over the ivory skin.

‘Doesn’t he look sad?’

‘Terribly sad, yes.’

The boy carried the weight of his heavy robes with sweet dignity but the wide-apart green eyes were dreamily mournful and the lovely curve of his mouth inclined more to sorrow than to joy. Barnaby had the sudden, deeply fanciful notion that his pallor could have come from recent tears.

‘How old do you think he is?’ asked Laura.

‘I would have said fifteen or so, except for these.’ He pointed to the delicate, well-shaped hands. ‘They belong to a young man.’

‘Yes. I wonder about him and because I’ll never know I make things up. That his parents are insisting on a dynastic marriage with someone he hates. That he reigns over a kingdom struck down by plague. That the court necromancer has him in thrall. Whatever the reason, I feel sure his heart is breaking.’