The Killings at Badger's Drift (16 page)

Next morning, the day before the inquest was due to be reconvened, Barnaby got to his office early and settled down for a rapid read-through of pro-formas, statements and reports. The gist of these would later be transferred to a rotating card system (they were still waiting for a computer). He called for some coffee and began.

He read fast and skilfully, seizing on tiny details, passing quickly over the mundane and merely repetitious. The result was pretty much as he had expected. The only males in the village not at work on the afternoon of the seventeenth or at home with their wives were two unemployed men who spent the time on their respective allotments in full view of each other. The vicar had been in his study working on next week’s sermon. A fact confirmed by his housekeeper who had been making jam in the kitchen and was highly indignant that the vicar, a frail old party of seventy-three, should have been questioned at all. In the evening the men were either at home with their families or in the Black Boy. Policewoman Brierley brought in the coffee and Barnaby took it gratefully.

The women of Badger’s Drift also seemed to be accounted for. Some were out at work. The old ones at home. The rest (with the exception of Mrs Quine) in the village hall preparing for the morrow. The young women who had left the hall in plenty of time for a quick frolic in the bracken had all met their children off the school bus and gone home to a blameless tea. In the evening three carloads had gone to Causton for a keep-fit class and the rest had stayed at home. Assuming that the couple in the woods were inhabitants of the village, which Barnaby was still inclined to do, the circle of suspects was very small indeed.

He finished his coffee, noting with some surprise, as the liquid went down, the gradual emergence of a green frog wearing a friendly smile and a straw boater, and playing a banjo. He turned to the scene-of-crime reports.

There were not many surprises. The larder window had been forced and traces of white paint were on the inside shelf. There was not, alas, the weather being dry, a lump of mud with the pattern of a shoe sole clearly visible. No fingerprints on the piecrust table, the hemlock-filled jar, garden trowel, door handles and all the other places one would expect to find fingerprints. And none on the telephone - which was strange, as the last person to handle that should have been Doctor Lessiter. And what reason would he have for wiping it clean? The pencil mark on the copy of
Julius Caesar
was a 6B. Not perhaps as common as some but hardly a vanishing species. The pencil had not been found. Elimination tests showed that any prints belonged either to the deceased or to Miss Lucy Bellringer.

He skimmed the second report again briefly but he had missed very little the first time. A search for the rug was in progress but Barnaby was not optimistic. Anyone who was so punctilious over fingerprints would hardly leave the thing lying around in the back of a car or flung over a sofa. Of course it was hardly common knowledge that the fibres of a rug had been found and not everyone knew that semen stains were as conclusive as fingerprints. The police might just be lucky. Troy opened the door.

‘Car ready when you are, Chief.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Sergeant Troy, turning off the Gessler Tye road towards Badger’s Drift, ‘that could’ve been arse bandits in the woods. You know . . . gay.’ There could not have been more venom in the last word if the couple had been seen devouring children.

This was the fifth suggestion he had made in the last ten minutes, all scrupulously punctuated with ‘sirs’. He was very free with his ‘sirs’, was Troy. You couldn’t fault him on etiquette. Nor on discipline. Sergeant Troy played it by the book. He passed his exams with room to spare, his reports were models of concise yet comprehensive information. He was without the silly romanticism that lured so many men and women into the force and also without the rather watery compassion that usually evaporated when confronted by their first one hundred per cent amoral, ruthlessly proficient, frequently armed villain. Especially he was without the compassion. He was about to chirp up again. Really, thought the chief inspector, with a more likable personality you could have called him irrepressible.

Before Troy could speak Barnaby said, ‘That had occurred to me as well but, as far as we know, only Dennis Rainbird fits that description. I checked with his partner and he definitely didn’t leave work until quarter to five on the Friday. Also there seems to be no reason why he should conceal any such relationship. It’s no longer against the law.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Troy, adding, with unusual percipience, ‘I bet his mother would be jealous, though.’ Then, ‘Shan’t we be a bit early for the Lessiter girl?’

‘It’s her half day.’

‘
Oh my God!
’ Sergeant Troy slammed on the brakes. The car screamed to a stop. Barnaby pitched forward, saved from a collision with the windscreen by his belt. A figure had leapt out from behind the village post box almost directly in their path. Barnaby wound the window down and spoke through blanched lips.

‘It’s really not a good idea, Miss Bellringer—’

‘How fortuitous.’ She beamed at them. A faint scent of carnations and orris root pervaded the interior of the car. Before Barnaby could stop her she had opened the door, climbed in and disposed herself on the back seat. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘first and before I forget, the funeral’s tomorrow. Eleven-thirty. I don’t know if you wish to come?’

Barnaby murmured something noncommittal. Sergeant Troy dug out a packet of Chesterfields with trembling fingers.

‘And don’t do that in here, young man. You’ll put us all at risk.’ He dropped the cigarettes on his lap, leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘Now,’ she smiled sweetly at Barnaby, ‘tell me how you’re getting on with your disquisition. Are you any further forrard?’

‘We’re continuing our investigations.’

‘There’s no need to be so hoity-toity, Chief Inspector. After all if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have a case at all. And you did say I could help.’ She accompanied this outrageous lie with a shining glance, as clear and candid as a child’s. Before Barnaby could get his breath she added, ‘Have you spoken to that dreadful Mrs Rainbird?’

‘We have.’

‘What’s she say? Did she see anything?’

The chief inspector saw no need to conceal Mrs Rainbird’s revelations. No doubt they were all over the village by now. ‘She did see Miss Lacey that evening. Going out to post a letter.’

‘Hmmn.’ Miss Bellringer snorted. ‘That girl is far too beautiful for other people’s good. Look here - there’s no point in dancing around the mulberry bush. It’s pretty obvious to an old hand like myself why we’re all being questioned about the afternoon as well as the evening. Emily saw something in the woods and it’s my belief that what we’re talking about here is illicit passion.’ Her voice rang out, investing the words with positively Brontëan splendour. ‘To wit Katherine Lacey and her
inamorato
. It’s as plain as a horse’s tail. Can you imagine what discovery would have meant? No marriage, for a start. Henry might be besotted but he’s not that much of a fool. It would have been goodbye to Tye House and all that money and, incidentally, to an easily cuckolded spouse. Madly in love and confined to a wheelchair? Talk about a combination devoutly to be wished. She’d be able to do more or less as she liked. And there’s bad blood in that family. The father was no good. Drove his poor wife into her grave.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Old sins cast long shadows.’ Barnaby was silent. ‘Did Mrs R see the girl coming back?’

‘Apparently not. She started playing Monopoly with her son.’

‘The slithy tove?’ Barnaby smiled appreciatively.

‘She did say Miss Lacey had one of the beagles with her.’

‘
One of the beagles
.’ Miss Bellringer seized his arm. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Mrs Rainbird’s sure.’

She crumpled back into her seat. Even her buoyant draperies, today trimmed with what looked like shredded beetroot, seemed to wilt. ‘Then our case collapses.’

‘Why is that?’ asked the chief inspector, letting the ‘our’ pass for the time being.

‘There was no noise from Benjy. He was good if a person he knew came to the door . . . good as gold . . . but let another dog as much as set foot in the garden and he went berserk. And I would certainly have heard him. Living so close.’

‘Perhaps Miss Lacey could have tied him up,’ suggested Troy, stimulated in spite of himself by the vitality of the narrative. ‘The beagle I mean.’

‘Hooo.’ A sound like a ship’s hooter. ‘You don’t know beagles. They won’t sit meekly down and wait while you go about your business. They’re a highly vociferous lot. If she’d tied him up the whole village would have known about it. No - not a dog barked, I’m sure. Ah well’ - she opened the right-hand door, knocking ten years off the life of a passing cyclist, and stepped smartly out - ‘we’ll have to think again. I’m loathe to part with the Laceys, mind you. What about the brother?’

‘The brother has no motive, Miss Bellringer. And now I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.’

‘If someone had wrung her neck I could understand it.’ Troy drew a deep, juddering breath as he drove off. ‘They just don’t care, do they? Your genuine eccentrics? They don’t care what you think.’

‘A genuine eccentric,’ replied Barnaby, ‘doesn’t even notice what you think.’ He added, ‘Keep an eye out for that dog,’ as Troy entered the cobbled yard of Tye House and parked, almost chastely and quite without his usual pizzaz, near the kitchen door. But the warning was unnecessary. Benjy did not come to meet them but lay on the step, very thin, his grey muzzle resting on his paws. His tail heaved off the ground and thumped up and down once or twice as he peered anxiously towards them. Like Ulysses’ hound he waited, faithful to the last.

‘Poor old boy,’ said the sergeant. ‘Good boy.’ He was about to stroke the dog but as he bent down Benjy turned his head and something in his eyes stayed Troy’s hand. ‘They should’ve had this dog seen to by now.’

Barnaby pointed to the far end of the lawn. ‘In the garden,’ he said. As the two men descended the steps between the stone urns brimming with flowers he felt a welcome breeze against his temples. It pressed the lemon voile of Katharine Lacey’s dress close against the slender curves of her body. She was standing behind Henry’s chair, her arms across his chest, her head close to his. As Barnaby approached she pointed to a nearby grove of poplars. Henry shook his head and they both laughed. Then she started to push the chair in Barnaby’s direction.

‘We’re going to have a hundred people here on Saturday, Inspector,’ called Trace. ‘Where do you think we should put the marquee?’

Spoilt for choice, really, thought Troy, in a garden that size. Still all the money in the world wouldn’t make his legs more lively. Imagine going down the aisle to a gorgeous piece of skirt like that in a wheelchair. He smiled confidently and said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lacey.’

‘Wherever we put it,’ she smiled at the two policemen, ‘it’s going to make a terrible mess.’

‘Oh grass soon recovers,’ replid Henry. ‘Are you a gardening man, Inspector Barnaby?’

Barnaby indicated that he was and asked if they’d come to any decision yet about the rosarium. This led to a lot of pleasant horticultural chat and to Henry describing his wedding gift for Katherine, which was nineteen old-fashioned moss and climbing roses: ‘A flower for each year of her life.’

‘Then we shall plant one on all our wedding anniversaries until we’re old and grey,’ said Katherine. ‘And that will be our rosarium.’

Barnaby let this amiable pool of conversation fill up for a while then dropped his stone. ‘Oh - a small point, Miss Lacey. When I spoke to you a few days ago I understood you to say that you spent the evening of the seventeenth here with Mr Trace.’

‘That’s right, I did.’

‘And you didn’t go out at all?’

‘No. We were here all the time.’

‘You were seen walking in the village.’

‘Me?’ She looked genuinely puzzled. ‘But I couldn’t have - Oh! Of course. I ran out to post a letter. D’you remember, darling? We said we’d order a Notcutt’s catalogue and I thought I’d do it straight away.’

‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to do that by telephone?’

‘They’re not free. You have to send a cheque.’

‘That would be their main branch at Woodbridge?’ She nodded. ‘Do you remember how long you were out?’

‘Not exactly. I just ran Peel to the end of Church Lane and home again. Surely,’ she added crisply, ‘whoever saw me going out saw me coming back?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Dear me. Sleeping at their post were they?’

‘You didn’t see anyone whilst you were out?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘You would support what Miss Lacey says, sir?’

‘Well . . . I didn’t see Katherine leave—’

‘No, you dropped off after dinner. That’s the only reason I went just then, really.’