Written in Blood (52 page)

Amy didn’t seem to hear. She was moving around the room touching things - rocking the dappled horse, running a little green metal car backwards and forwards along the edge of a shelf, glancing through school exercise books. She was trying hard to invest these actions with emotion or meaning, but felt merely awkward and artificial. It seemed a ghostly place to her without even the memory of a life in it. Both sacred and pointless, like a mausoleum.

She pushed open the curtain and sunlight flooded the room, throwing into harsh relief the nursery artefacts so incongruously combined with ceremonial appointments of death. Suddenly the stifling atmosphere became unbearable.

‘Let’s go.’

‘Don’t you want to take something?’ The house was due to be cleared the next morning by a firm from Princes Risborough.

‘I have this.’ Amy’s fingers rested briefly on the locket. She was almost running down the landing. ‘Come
on
, Sue.’

Sue was glad to comply. When they were once more outside she looked up at the great brooding mass of grey stone, which now belonged to Amy, and was glad that she would never have to enter it again. They set off down the drive together.

It was a beautiful March day. The sky was a great stretched arc of cloudless blue. There were daffodils all along the drive and crocuses and aconites beneath the trees. As Amy closed the main gates Sue said, ‘I’ve brought some bread. Shall we feed the ducks?’

‘All right.’ They crossed over on to the Green and the ducks immediately started quacking and waddling towards them. ‘How is it they always know?’

‘They spot the bags. You can give them the cake if you like.’

Sue couldn’t get out of the habit of baking, even though there was only her and Amy and, more and more frequently, Amanda. The local wildlife, in all its varieties, had never been so well fed. She passed a huge lump of dried seed cake over to Amy, who crumbled it, saying, ‘We mustn’t forget that little one who always gets pushed out.’

‘I’ll see if I can coax him away while you distract the rest.’

Sue concealed her bread and moved off, leaving Amy surrounded by a bustling crew of eager birds. Then she crouched down by the side of the pond and tried to attract the attention of the very small mallard trying to push its way in, through or round the others but never quite making it. While tearing up a crust she thought about Hector, as she did most of the time now that she was a proper author, with a contract and commission for a second story. The working title for this was
Hector Learns to Rumba
and to say he looked remarkable in his Latin American costume would be putting it mildly.

Sue made little chucking noises, trying to attract the mallard’s attention, but without success. Perhaps it would be better to throw something so close to its beak that the others would not have a chance to snatch it. But they were packed very tightly together . . .

Amy was coming to the end of her cake. Sue watched as she distributed the final crumbs and reflected on how, in the space of a mere few weeks, their fortunes had both changed.

Amy was rich now. She had been offered what had seemed to them both an astonishing amount of money for Gresham House. And she was also, slowly, getting better. When she had first arrived at Trevelyan Villas from the hospital she had wept all through the daylight hours and had nightmares in the dark. Sue had felt quite desperate sometimes as to what best to do. But now, although Amy’s sleep was never unbroken, she had at least stopped crying and yesterday had even started talking about the future, wondering where she should decide to live for instance. And how she must soon start thinking of getting on with
Rompers
.

Sue herself was fine. She had heard once, via her solicitor, from Brian. He had written suggesting that he move back in, just until Sue got over the shock of him moving out. She had thrown the letter on the fire.

‘You’re miles away.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Sue straightened up. ‘Sorry.’

‘What were you thinking?’

Sue, who had been thinking that she would never again have to watch Brian wrinkling the skin of his cocoa to the side of his cup with his tongue and then eating it, said, ‘I was wondering if I should take my lenses out. My eyes are watering a bit.’

‘It’s the wind. Put some drops in when you get back.’

Sue distributed the rest of her bread. The mallard remained unlucky.

‘I’m sure he’s all right, actually,’ said Amy. ‘He may be small but he doesn’t look thin. And his feathers are lovely and shiny.’

In the distance, as they walked home, they saw Rex exercising his soppy dog. He called out to them and waved and they waited for him to approach. Even from several feet away it was plain the man was consumed by happiness. His smile covered half his face and his eyes shone.

‘What is it, Rex?’ asked Sue. ‘Down, Montcalm! You seem very pleased with life.’

‘Well . . .’ About to speak with great eagerness, Rex checked himself. The truth was that his current research into warrior traditions had just turned up the most amazing fact. It seemed that the Huns had used to cut the cheeks of new-born male babies with swords so the infants would taste blood before their mother’s milk. Rex’s pleasure in this arcane titbit had been only slightly diminished when he had been unable to find a place for it in
The Night of the Hyena
.

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.