Written in Blood (24 page)

Rex, his spherical frizz of hair now drooping sadly, picked up a second tube then stood distractedly staring at the closed curtains. The truth was he did not know what to do with himself. He had no heart for the downfall of Byzantium. Or for map reading. Nor making out mock orders for bully beef and hard tack on his faded pink pad of quartermaster’s forms before polishing his medals. Even his
Dictionary of Weapons and Military Terms
for the first time ever failed to enthral. For Rex was gripped by the most devastating remorse.

If only, he moaned silently, I had hammered on the front door the moment it was closed, and kept hammering. Or gone round to the kitchen and got in that way. Anything would have been better than running away like a frightened rabbit. Ten-year-old drummer boys under fire had shown more courage. Rex recalled with shame the feelings of embarrassment that had kept him from persisting. For the sake of mere self-consciousness a man had died.

And if only, once back in Borodino, he had talked to someone. Anyone. For Gerald would surely have understood that it was only concern for his well-being that had forced Rex to break his promise. Or he could have rung Gerald up himself from the box. And why, when he finally did return, had he not taken Montcalm? Instructed, the dog would have barked and thundered and skittered his claws till someone had responded. He would not have slunk away, at the first little set-back, to the safety of his own bunker.

But the hardest question of all, the sharpest lance, was why he (Rex) had been so quickly seduced into complacency by the sight of a relaxed Max smiling, sipping a drink and chatting, with apparent amiability, to Gerald.

Oh! that word ‘apparently’. For, with hindsight, it seemed to Rex that Max could well have sensed that he was being observed and was merely faking benevolence. Maybe by that time poor Gerald was already disabled in some way, lying wounded, or gagged and bound, just beyond Rex’s line of vision, praying that someone would break in and save him from the
coup de grâce
.

Last night Rex had had a dreadful dream. He had been staring through the kitchen window at Plover’s Rest, obsessed with a fearful knowledge that something terrible was about to happen. Inside, Gerald was making a sandwich. He had lain down a slice of white bread the size of a dinner plate then taken down his mortar and pestle and emptied into it a large brown bottle of tablets that Rex understood to be lethal. Grinding them slowly into powder he had then shaken this on the bread and folded it over. Pacing up and down the room, he started to eat very fast, pushing the sandwich at his mouth, knuckling in the edges. Rex pounded on the window but the glass simply gave way under his hand then sprang back, smoothly undented, making no sound. Gradually, as Gerald ate, his skin became all red and shiny, like wet paint.

Rex shivered. He was very cold. It was bedtime but he had forgotten to fill his hot-water bottle or switch on the tiny electric fire in his bedroom. He felt Montcalm’s head, the beard still damp with salivary gratitude, nudging his knee.

He unplugged the last two tubes of Smarties and shared them out, thinking what a relief it would have been to have spoken all these bitterly regretful musings aloud. But you could not burden a simple canine mind with such concerns. Montcalm would just have become depressed both over the sad facts of the case and his inability to be of any solid, practical use.

There was another reason too. (Here Rex got slowly and stiffly to his feet.) The heart of the matter was that he could not bear the dog to discover he had a master of whom he should be ashamed.

 

Amy was sitting beside a grate holding nothing for her comfort but a dusty, accordion-pleated, crimson parchment fan. Honoria, sitting upright as if bolted into position, was behind her desk studying a page of four heraldic plates by the light of an ancient cream Anglepoise. The book had been in the parcel from the London Library. Membership was expensive but, because of the importance of the work, not regarded as an extravagance, unlike Amy’s Biro and copying paper. This last cost two pound sixty-five a packet and, such was the amount of time she had to spare, lasted forever.

Honoria also used the reference library in Uxbridge, wearing white cotton gloves bought specifically for that purpose from the pharmaceutical section at Boots. She never took books out for fear of where they’d been. (Marie Corelli’s notion that the working classes should be denied access to such institutions to stop them spreading their filthy germs would have found great favour with Honoria.) Amy’s polluting volumes were kept safely tethered in her room.

‘Look at this,’ Honoria hissed, baring camel-like teeth the colour of old piano keys.

She appeared to be talking to herself but, just to be on the safe side and also for a chance to get near the warm, Amy went and stood behind the carved, throne-like chair. In the centre of the page, which Honoria had just spanked severely, was a very faint brown ring.

‘Would you believe it?’ she now cried.

‘Yes I would,’ replied Amy. ‘I took out an Iris Murdoch once and someone had inked commas in between all her adjectives.’

‘You expect no more from the users of public libraries.’ She was wrong; there was quite a lot more. The counter assistant had told Amy of a book returned with a fried egg used as a marker. When remonstrated with, the subscriber had said she’d been brought up never to turn the pages down.

‘What are you standing there for?’

Amy returned to her seat, where she also was doing research. Behind the protective shield of
Art and Architecture: English Country Houses in the Eighteenth Century
was concealed Penny Vincenzi’s
Old Sins
. Amy was analysing as she went along, seeing when hares were started and how various plot lines finally meshed, noting how the dialogue both carried the story and revealed character.

As it was a tenpenny bargain from the church jumble she was able to make notes discreetly in the margin. Of course she would rather be working on her own book. Amy had been astonished when Max Jennings, asked for a definition of writing, had said, ‘Looking for something else to do.’ She could never wait to get back to
Rompers
.

The problem was, although it had never been said in so many words, that her time was not really her own until she retired. And Amy could not retire before bedtime drinks were made. She could sit all evening with - or rather in the same room as - Honoria, or potter about in the freezing kitchen, with never a demand being made. But should she disappear upstairs, within minutes there would be a call for a fact to be verified, a pencil to be sharpened or perhaps merely a cup of Ridgeway’s Orange Pekoe to be infused.

Amy peered over the edge of her pages at the formidable bulk of her sister-in-law, noting the massive shoulders and unyielding cliff of a bosom. Impossible to imagine Ralph’s downy infant head resting comfortably there. Yet rest it must have done. There was an oval photograph of them both on the washstand in Honoria’s room. She was wearing a brightly patterned dress over a froth of petticoats and shoes with little Louis heels. She had been a big girl even then, with beefy shoulders and a strong jaw. But she looked so happy, holding the baby high in the air, arms straight, head thrown back and laughing with joy into his face.

Amy looked at the picture often. Knowing that Honoria had loved and cared for Ralph every day of his young life made the miseries of Gresham House a bit easier to bear. And this devotion had been a sacrifice in more ways than one. Ralph had told Amy that his sister had been on the point of getting engaged, to a farmer from Hertford, when their parents were killed. He had refused to accept the child and severed the relationship. Amy sometimes wondered if this story was true and not only because the idea of anyone being romantically interested in Honoria seemed so totally preposterous. Amy would not put it past her to make something like this up in an attempt to bind Ralph with chains of guilt.

Yet surely Honoria had not believed her brother would never marry, that she could somehow ‘mother’ him to the end of his days? How against nature this would be. Amy imagined Ralph, handsome, light of heart, slowly transformed into a sad middle-aged bachelor looking after a crabby old woman seventeen years his senior. But perhaps, if he had stayed at home, she would not have become crabby.

Amy had really looked forward to meeting her beloved’s only relative. She had imagined many visits of quiet happiness when they would go through family albums together while Honoria filled in the background, repeating old jokes and Ralph’s infant malapropisms - scenes such as Ralph enjoyed when he visited Amy’s parents. But the reality had been quite different. Honoria had greedily taken over Amy’s husband the minute they arrived, sucking him into ‘do you remember’ conversations with an insatiable and, it seemed to Amy, rather unhealthy relish. She had been reminded of those doting parents who say of their infant ‘Couldn’t you just eat him?’

She saw why Ralph had to get away. And stay away if he was to survive and grow. Before she had got to know Honoria Amy had urged Ralph to see more of his sister. Write more frequently. But sometimes, when they came to England, Ralph would not even let Honoria know they were in the country. Amy had never told her sister-in-law this. She had an unwillingness to inflict pain that Honoria said was the sure sign of a weakling.

The springs of the grandmother clock, coughing softly, recalled Amy to an unhappy present. It was ten o’clock, time for the news.

Honoria got up clumsily, jarring the chair back and almost overturning the lamp and switched on something that could only be called a wireless. A maple bird’s-eye cabinet with bakelite knobs, fawn silk fretted panels and valves that had to be let warm up. Honoria always stared at it fiercely when it was animate as if listening alone would not give full value. Amy closed
Old Sins
, slipped the book under her jumper and went to make the cocoa.

She measured two cups of liquid and put the pan on. It had to be half and half for there were only two pints of milk a day and she had made some queen cakes that morning. Honoria was so mean. Yesterday, after Amy had scraped the very last smear of Marmite from the jar to make lunch-time sandwiches, Honoria had filled it with hot water, swilled it round and put the residue aside for gravy.

Ralph had said it was because she remembered the war, but Amy didn’t believe that for a minute. Her own mother had lived through the same period and had been the most profligate of women, hurling butter and cream into her cooking, leaving soap to dissolve in the bath and tossing left-overs straight into the bin.

At Gresham House even a single uneaten sprout would be placed in the cavernous Electrolux and covered with a saucer, to be usefully incorporated in some future repast. It would turn up, sometimes days later, squatting next to a Welsh rarebit like a soft little green boulder or bulking out a pilchard omelette.

Amy snatched at the pan just in time and made the drinks. She was tempted to a queen cake, but Honoria might have counted them, as she had the Butter Osbornes last week.

Amy’s fingers strayed to the locket with Ralph’s picture that always hung around her neck. She wished with hopeless, helpless longing that he was beside her. Then all the penny-pinching would have been merely a lark and the rambling, stone-cold barn of a house filled with warmth and light and sunshine. But Ralph lay beneath the yew trees in his grave and oh! might Amy have cried, had she been at all familiar with the phrase, the difference to me.

 

Barnaby once more made his way to the table at the far end of the incident room, taking all its attention with him. Those seated turned aside from their computers, rolling their heads and hunching their shoulders to relieve tension. Footsloggers perched on the ends of desks or leant against the wall, talking amongst themselves and popping cans from the automat. Inspector Meredith, sleek in his Tommy Nutter tweeds and moleskin waistcoat, had found himself a nice-looking chair and positioned it prominently.

Barnaby opened with a brief summary of the post-mortem. He then recapped on his interview with Laura as did Troy on his with Brian Clapton. Then Barnaby spoke again.

‘We had news a short time ago about Hadleigh’s car. No surprises. A straight TDA. Good and wrecked and dumped in the river. We should have the SOCO report on Plover’s Rest first thing in the morning and there’s been a fax from Jennings’ publishers, which I’ve condensed, giving details of his background. Sergeant?’

Troy cleared his throat. ‘Born and brought up in Scotland in the early fifties. State educated. Degree in eng . . . um . . . ing . . .’

‘Eng. Lit. I think you’ll find, sergeant,’ said Meredith.

‘Yeah. Right.’ Troy’s near-transparent skin reddened. ‘From Birmingham. Returned home, got a job on the local newspaper subbing and writing features. Moved to London and wrote copy for various advertising agencies while working on his first novel,
Far Away Hills
. Following its success became a writer full time. Married to dancer Ava June. One child, died in infancy.’

‘No luck so far,’ Barnaby moved on quickly, seeing that Inspector Meredith was about to chime in, ‘on finding Hadleigh’s marriage certificate, will or even National Insurance number, but we have traced the estate agent who sold him the cottage and hope to have, by tomorrow, the name of the solicitor who did the conveyancing. There’s just a chance he may have handled other business for Hadleigh as well. So . . .’ He stared questioningly at his outside team.

Detective Constable Willoughby, still, to everyone’s annoyance, looking as cookie crisp and fresh from the cleaner’s as he had nearly ten footslogging hours ago, spoke up.

‘This blonde Mrs Hutton mentions, sir. Doesn’t tie in at all with what we’ve been picking up—’

‘Yes. Thank you, constable,’ interrupted Inspector Meredith. After a commanding check around the room to see that all were attending, he continued, ‘I’m afraid, in spite of a most comprehensive and pertinent series of interviews, with a wide range of villagers, we’ve had more success finding out what Mr Hadleigh didn’t do than what he did. With the exception of the Writers Circle he joined in no aspect of rural life and this includes going to church. No one can recall friends staying overnight or even day visitors and the house is perfectly placed for these sorts of comings and goings to be observed. His car was serviced regularly by the Cross Keys garage at Charlecote Lucy. He paid promptly by cheque and, though civil, was never forthcoming. He didn’t use the pub but did frequent the village store. Mrs Miggs, the owner, always thought of him as an ex-military man because he sometimes wore a blue blazer with brass buttons.’