Written in Blood (9 page)

‘No, no. Of course not.’ Hastily Barnaby offered reassurance. ‘Really I’m more interested in discovering what happened before you found Mr Hadleigh.’

‘Oh.’ She looked very slightly consoled but also puzzled. ‘You mean, on me way here? I come on the bus.’

‘More when you first approached the house, Mrs Bundy. Did you notice anything at all unusual?’

‘What sort of thing?’

Well, if we knew that ducky, Troy muttered in his head, we wouldn’t be asking, would we? They were going to be here all day at this pussyfooting rate. He leered hungrily at the shiny packet of twenty minus seven and decided he could murder the rest.

‘Well, the gate was wide open. That means the postman’s been. He won’t shut it, even after Mr Hadleigh went and put a sign on. So I closed it behind me and walked up the path and - you talking about anything out of the ordinary - I couldn’t help noticing the curtains were still closed. Downstairs in the lounge and in Mr Hadleigh’s bedroom. And then I go to let meself in—’

‘You have your own key?’

‘Oh yes.’ She added, with rather touching pride, ‘All the people I clean for have given me a key. But the door’s bolted on the inside. I stood there for a minute not knowing quite what to do, then I went round the back. I tried the kitchen door but not with what you’d call high hopes. It doesn’t have a proper Yale but it’s got a dead bolt top and bottom. Anyway, I lift the latch and walk right in.’

‘It opened straight away?’

‘Yes. I went in the hall and shouted “hello”—’

‘Did you see any post there, Mrs Bundy?’

‘No, I didn’t, now you come to mention it.’

‘Carry on.’

‘I put me apron on—’

‘Do you bring it with you?’

‘No. That hangs on a peg in the broom cupboard together with a scarf against the dust.’ She patted her hair - a straw-coloured airy confection; teased, sprayed, moussed and bleached beyond redemption.

‘Then I notice not just that he hadn’t had his breakfast, but the table wasn’t even laid. So, what with that and the curtains and everything, I wondered if he might’ve been took bad. I felt a bit embarrassed, to tell you the truth. I didn’t like to go upstairs in case he was still in bed - me husband’s a bit funny over things like that - on the other hand I couldn’t settle down to work not knowing if the house was empty or not. If you get my meaning.’

‘I do,’ said Barnaby. ‘Absolutely.’

‘So . . .’ Here it was. The dark heart of the tale. She braced herself, incising half moons once more in her arms. ‘I went to his room—’

‘The door was open?’

‘Yes.’

‘Light on?’

‘
Yes
,’ Mrs Bundy shouted, and struck her forehead with her fists, compelled by a fierce hatred of the memory. ‘Oh! I could curse myself for going in there. The smell . . .
the smell
. . . that should have told me. Why didn’t I just go back downstairs and call somebody? But you don’t think, do you?’

‘’Course you don’t, love,’ said the policewoman.

‘I shall never stop seeing him. I know I shan’t. Never. Till the end of my days.’

Barnaby thought that this was probably true. The image would change, of course, but would inevitably re-create itself a thousand times. A bad day indeed for Mrs Bundy.

She had already mentally fled back to the kitchen. Barnaby, reluctantly but necessarily, took her back upstairs. ‘Did you touch anything in the room?’

‘Christ! Are you kidding?’ For the first time vitality flared. She sounded outraged. ‘I come down that bloody fast me feet didn’t touch the carpet.’

‘Did you see—?’

‘I saw him. That’s all I saw. One look and I scarpered. All right?’ She pushed her face across the table until it was inches from his own. Barnaby could see she was either going to strike out or burst into tears.

‘Fine. That’s fine, Mrs Bundy. Thank you.’ His voice was excessively calm. He looked at the young policewoman. ‘I think we could all . . . ?’

While tea was being made Mrs Bundy extended her acquaintance with the Bensons. There were now nine lipsticked butts in the ashtray. Troy looked elsewhere.

The sergeant was a deeply frustrated man. He couldn’t smoke in the office. He couldn’t smoke in the car. He couldn’t smoke on the job. (Not his day job anyway.) And, now that the dangers of passive smoking had been provably demonstrated, he had to be bloody careful when and where he smoked at home. For Talisa Leanne, his heart’s delight and the best reason for living a man could ever hope to come across, was only two, and two-year-old lungs were obviously extremely vulnerable. Troy had found himself, only that very morning, not only enjoying his post-breakfast ciggie in the toilet but blowing the smoke out of the window. I’m an endangered species I am, he reflected bitterly now, accepting, in poor substitute, a cup of strong Breakfast Blend.

‘So you’re back in the kitchen, Mrs Bundy,’ said the chief inspector, adopting an easy conversational tone as if they were discussing the weather.

‘I am,’ said Mrs Bundy firmly.

‘And then what?’

‘I was sick.’ She nodded in Troy’s direction. ‘Over there.’

Although the sink was by now spotless the sergeant sniffed fastidiously and whisked himself and his notebook some distance away.

‘Then I rang Don at work and he got in touch with your lot. He come right over but they won’t let him in.’

‘No. Sorry about that,’ said Barnaby. ‘But I won’t keep you a minute longer than I have to.’ He drank some of his tea, which was delicious. ‘That’s a lot of crockery on the draining board. Did he entertain much, Mr Hadleigh?’

She shook her head. ‘Very rare. Only there’s a group in the village meet here regular. Once a month. They do writing together - stories and that.’ She sounded faintly apologetic and smiled for the first time. ‘Well, it takes all sorts doesn’t it?’

‘It does indeed.’ Barnaby, smiling in return, sensed, on the edge of his vision, that Troy was about to speak and gave a small holding movement with his hand. ‘Could you perhaps, Mrs Bundy, give me the names of any of the members?’

‘As to who was here last night I wouldn’t really know. But Mr and Mrs Clapton next door sometimes come.’ She pointed to her left. ‘And the Lyddiards from Gresham House. It’s about six down on this side of the Green. A big place. Pineapples on the gate. I do for them as well. Just the rough.’

‘A married couple?’

‘Oh no. Miss Honoria and her sister-in-law. She’s sweet, Mrs L. I feel sorry for her. They haven’t even got a telly.’

‘Had you worked for Mr Hadleigh long?’

‘Nearly ten years. Ever since he bought the cottage. All through once a week and top up Thursday. His washing goes to the laundry.’

‘So you’d know him pretty well?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He was very reserved. Not like some of my ladies. Often I’ll just be getting started and they’ll go, “I’m that down today, Carol. Come on - let’s have a break and a cuppa.” And we’ll pull a chair up and they’ll tell me all about it. But not Mr Hadleigh. Close was his middle name. Quite honestly I don’t think I know him any better now than I did the day I started.’

‘What was he like to work for?’

‘Very particular. Everything had to be just so. Ornaments and books back exactly where they came from. But at least he left you alone to get on with it. Unlike some.’

‘No Mrs Hadleigh then?’

‘He was a widower. You’ll see their wedding picture on the sideboard in the lounge. Always a vase of fresh flowers nearby, just like a shrine. Very sad. You’d think he’d be getting over it a bit by now.’

‘Do you know when Mrs Hadleigh actually died?’

‘No idea.’

‘Can you think of any reason, Mrs Bundy, why anyone would want to—?’

‘No, I can’t! And I want to go home now.’ She looked at the policewoman in a beseeching way as if the woman had some sort of casting vote. Her voice had started to shake again.

‘Almost through,’ said Barnaby. ‘I’d just like you, if you would, to glance around here and the sitting room and see if anything’s missing.’

‘Everything’s all right in here.’ She got up, looking at the policewoman. ‘Would you mind . . . ?’ They left the room together, returning almost straight away.

‘The photograph’s gone. Of the wedding.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Not that I can see offhand.’

‘We’ll probably have to talk to you again, I’m afraid—’

‘Not here you won’t. I’m never coming in this place again as long as I live.’

‘Don’t worry. It would be at home or at the station, whichever you prefer. And we’d like your fingerprints - just for purposes of elimination.’

The policewoman helped Mrs Bundy on with her coat and opened the kitchen door only to smartly close it again. She took Mrs Bundy’s arm, led her to one side and Barnaby heard murmured suggestions of support and possible counselling. One or two addresses and telephone numbers were noted down.

There were heavy footsteps on the narrow stairs and some stumbling and banging as Gerald Hadleigh departed his home for the final time. A few minutes later Mrs Bundy followed and the police were left in sole occupation of Plover’s Rest.

 

‘All yours, Tom.’ Aubrey Marine stood in the doorway, still encased in protective polythene. ‘We’re downstairs now.’

The windows in Hadleigh’s bedroom were wide open, but the air still stank of mashy flesh and thick, puddling blood. There was a dark, sticky stain on the flowered Axminster, but nothing else to show that violence had been so recently and ferociously meted out. Every splinter of bone, however minute, every smear of grey matter and shred of skin, had been scrupulously tweezered away for close and, with luck, revelatory examination.

The room was sparsely furnished with expensive but dull reproduction pieces. A heavy oak bed and large wardrobe looking vaguely Regency. A pair of bedside cupboards with gilt filigree handles. A walnut chest of drawers, more on the Georgian side, on which stood two mildly-surprised-looking Staffordshire lions, their black-painted, crinkly knitting-wool manes glazed with powdered aluminium, as was every other smooth surface in the room. There was also a single bronze candlestick, twin to the murder weapon. On the bedside cupboard, furthest from where the body had lain, was a carafe of water covered by an upturned glass, a leather travelling alarm clock and a bunch of keys. Barnaby picked them up.

‘He drove a Celica.’

‘Very nice too.’

Troy, having opened one of the wardrobe doors, now reached up and, slipping his fingers behind the bevelled edge of the other, released the bolt. Two thirds of the space was taken up with clothes on hangers: suits, hacking jackets, a Burberry, neatly pressed trousers, a tie rack. And the rest by a stack of sliding, open-fronted drawers, eight in number, holding shirts in transparent wrappers, underwear, socks and soft, pricey sweaters in cashmere or lamb’s wool labelled Pringle and Braemar. Troy removed one of the shirts and regarded its immaculate snowy folds with deep approval. A mark showing some sort of feathered vertebrate admitted that the garment under scrutiny was kept in such pristine nick by the Brown Bird Laundry. The sergeant replaced it carefully and stepped back for a moment looking at the neatly folded stacks of clothes. Their regimental order and cleanliness warmed his heart. He himself left the house each morning a vision of spotless perfection and woe betide Maureen if things were otherwise.

On one of the rare occasions when he and the chief were having an off-duty drink Barnaby had said that he felt sometimes his sergeant objected to murder not so much because it was an outrageous violation against a human soul but because it was chaotic. Troy had been both hurt and angry at this remark and the lack of moral sensibility that it implied. He had dwelt upon it at some length after the two men had parted, which process made him angrier still, for introspection was not his forte and he avoided its dangers whenever possible. He dodged them now by bringing himself back to the present and getting on with the job, slipping his fingers quickly but thoroughly into the pockets of all the clothes on hangers. He discovered nothing more exciting than a clean handkerchief.

‘Look at these.’

Barnaby was standing by the bed, stripped bare by the SOCO team. A pair of striped pyjamas lay on the mattress. Troy, having dutifully crossed to the chief’s side and looked as instructed, was rather at a loss as to how to respond. Seen one pair of pyjamas and, it struck him, you had seen a multitude.

‘Very nice, chief.’

‘Why wasn’t he wearing them?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘He got undressed but instead of getting into these he put a robe on.’

‘Probably going to have a bath.’

Barnaby gave a non-committal grunt and wandered into the rather spartan en-suite bathroom. It was like a tiny sauna. The walls, bath enclosure and ceiling were stripped pine. A wooden bowl of shaving soap and an ivory-handled brush were on the shelf over the basin next to a double-sided mirror. Also on the shelf was a Rolex Oyster. He opened the louvred door of the cabinet. It held nothing but the usual complement of pain relievers, plasters, cotton wool, eye drops and deodorant. There was no steam on the glass or droplets of water on the wall but then, after twelve hours and in this temperature, there wouldn’t be. The post-mortem would tell them if Hadleigh had had a bath but not, of course, if he had merely intended to.

Troy, who had completed his search by going through a box of cufflinks, studs and other very ordinary bits and pieces, called out, ‘Nothing in the wardrobe. I’ll try the chest of drawers.’

‘Fine,’ Barnaby replied, though he knew how necessarily superficial their observations must be in comparison with the forensic reports that would be landing on his desk sometime within the next forty-eight hours.

‘Chief?’ Barnaby wandered back. ‘We’ve been robbed.’

‘So we have.’

Barnaby bent down and peered into the four drawers - two small ones paired over two large. All were lined with gingham-patterned paper which had a slightly waxy surface - not ideal from an investigative point of view. All were empty. He said, ‘How strange.’