The Killings at Badger's Drift (30 page)

‘But . . .’ he gaped at Barnaby. ‘Who is it?’

Barnaby glanced at the canvas. Resting on the rim of the easel was an envelope addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern’. He snatched it up and walked quickly out of the room. Troy, his face the colour of a boiled lobster, followed.

In the hallway Barnaby tore open the envelope, glancing rapidly over the pages. Then he hurried into the kitchen. Something which looked very like parsley was strewn all over the table. And there was a musty smell in the air. Like mice.

Troy stood watching his chief uncertainly. The man looked poleaxed. He sat down and shook his head from side to side as if to escape tormenting thoughts or an insect stinging. Then he got up and looked round him in a dazed manner. He stuffed the letter into his pocket and hurried from the room. He said nothing to his companion. Indeed Troy felt that Barnaby had forgotten he was there at all. Nevertheless he followed the other man as he hurried round the side of the house and immediately plunged deep into the woods. Troy, uncomfortably aware of the effect the painting had had on him, stumbled behind.

Barnaby twisted and turned, back-tracked and turned again. Too late, too late was all he could think as he wheeled round and round in circles while the unforgiving seconds ran through his fingers like silver sand. Images in his mind: a television screen with a square inset ticking off fractions of a second almost faster than the eye could see; banked computers and a nasal voice counting ‘Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.’ An hour glass, the last grains tumbling through. And, over and above everything, himself and Troy relaxing in the Copper Kettle. A starter, a main course. Cheese and biscuits as well as a pudding. Coffee. And a refill, sir? Why not? There’s no hurry. All the time in the world.

Where the hell was the place? He tried to remember if there was anything special about it. Any landmark. Only the ghost orchid which started the whole thing and the stick with the red bow which would have been removed days ago. So there was nothing . . .

God - he’d seen those scabby parasols on that tree trunk before. He’d been running around in bloody circles. He stopped, vaguely aware that Troy had crashed to a halt beside him. Only now was he aware that every beat of his heart was causing the most intense pain. That his jacket was black with sweat and snagged, like the skin on his face, with brambles. That he was opening his mouth wide and sucking in air like a drowning man. He stood very still, willing himself to think calmly.

And it was then he saw the hellebores. And knew why the scabby parasols looked familiar. A few feet away were the tightly latticed branches which made a screen that curved. He walked alongside the partition, his footsteps silent in the thick leaf mould, until he came to the end.

He was facing a hollow. Quite a large piece of the ground was flattened; bluebells and bracken folded backwards and crushed. Katherine Lacey lay in her lover’s arms. They rested heart to heart for comfort, like children lost in the wild wood. A single glass lay inches from his lifeless hand. She wore her bridal gown, stiff folds of ivory satin and a veil held in place by a circle of wild flowers. The veil, thickly embroidered and encrusted with seed pearls and diamante, streamed away from her body and seeped, a spangled luminous pool, into the surrounding dark. Her remarkable beauty was undimmed even in death. As Barnaby, bereft of speech, stood silently by, a large leaf drifted down and settled on her face, glowing richly against the waxen skin and covering her sightless eyes.

‘It was very good of you to come and see me, Chief Inspector.’

Barnaby sat back in the tapestry wing chair, a large slice of plum cake and a double Teachers at his elbow. ‘Not at all, Miss Bellringer. If it weren’t for you - as you remarked, I remember, quite early on in the proceedings - I would not have had a case at all.’

‘I always suspected the Lacey girl, you know.’

‘Yes,’ Barnaby nodded, ‘one is inclined to reject the very obvious solution. But it is so often the correct one.’

‘And of course once you realized she wasn’t working alone . . .’

‘Exactly. It then became clear how all three murders could have been committed.’

‘I feel so distressed about Phyllis Cadell. A terrible business. But I still don’t quite understand all the ramifications. Why on earth would she confess to something she hadn’t done?’

‘It is quite complicated.’ Barnaby took a sip of his Teachers. ‘And I’ll have to go back a few years to start explaining. Back to the Laceys’ childhood in fact. Do you remember Mrs Sharpe?’

‘The nanny? Yes, I do. Poor woman. They led her quite a dance, I believe.’

‘So Mrs Rainbird told me. Apparently the children were as thick as thieves when they were little, always plotting, planning, fiercely protective, always covering up for each other, then when they were older everything changed. Nothing but rows which got to such a pitch that, as soon as they were old enough to cope alone, old Nanny Sharpe left for a bit of peace and quiet by the seaside. I accepted this story at face value simply because I had no reason to doubt it. And the behaviour of the Laceys certainly bore it out. I overheard an extremely bitter quarrel between them myself. But my conversation with Mrs Sharpe gave me an entirely different picture.’

He took a bite of the excellent plum cake, stiff and black with fruit, and a swig of Teachers. In his mind he sat again on the unyielding Rexine sofa overlooked by a constellation of smiling Laceys. Mrs Lacey as a child and young woman, wedding photographs, christenings. The children growing up, so alike and watchful; always close.

‘She was the strong one,’ said Mrs Sharpe. ‘Took after her father.’

‘Not an easy man, I understand?’

‘He was wicked!’ Mrs Sharpe’s thin face flushed. ‘I don’t go in for all this modern understanding-what-makes-people-tick rubbish. There are some people just born wicked and he was one of them. He broke my poor girl’s heart and drove her to her death. She was a lovely creature too . . . so gentle. And other women . . . he was supposed to have met this smart piece he went abroad with after Madelaine died. Well I’ve never believed that and I never will. He was carrying on with her all along, to my way of thinking.’

‘The boy was more like his mother, then?’

‘He worshipped her. I felt so sorry for him. He tried to be brave . . . to protect her, but he was no match for his father. Gerald was a very violent man . . . once he threw an iron at Madelaine and Michael jumped in between them and got it full in the face. That’s how he got that mark, you know.’

Barnaby shook his head. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘But Katherine was all for her father. And he went off and left her without a backward glance. It would have damaged a weaker person for good and all but she . . . well . . . she was a chip off the old block all right. She didn’t seem much like him on the surface. He was flamboyant, always showing off . . . she’d draw into herself more, but in their hearts they were a dead spit. Fiery tempers and a cast-iron will. And when he’d gone she turned all her attention to Michael. And he, poor boy, with his mother dead, clung to her in desperation. You’d never have thought he was the elder. She was mother, father, sister, everything to him. Sometimes I wondered what I was doing there at all except there had to be somebody while they were still under age.

‘Michael started painting when he was about fourteen. Seriously, I mean. He’d always been good at art at school and they kept on at him to go to college. He went for a bit then walked out. Said they were a load of rubbish. And Katherine encouraged him. Told him he’d be better off travelling round Europe, going to galleries, museums and suchlike. That’s what painters always did, she said. Anyway, that’s how things stood till just before Katherine was seventeen. Michael’d had his eighteenth birthday a couple of months before and that’s when the rows started. Adolescent rows as I saw it. Picking fault with each other all the time, every day a slanging match. She’d scream at him, he’d fling himself out of the house. And yet, Inspector’ - she leaned forward and her voice became very quiet - ‘all the time this was going on I felt there was something wrong. I could sense the undercurrent of their feelings for each other as strong as ever. The rows seemed . . . forced somehow . . . unnatural.

‘Then, one night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours till at three o’clock I gave up and decided to go downstairs and make some tea. I was walking past Katherine’s door when I heard sounds . . . little cries. I thought she was having a nightmare so I opened the door and . . . looked in.’ Her face burned with the memory and she covered it with her hands. ‘I couldn’t stay after that. I gave the excuse to the Traces that the children - I still thought of them like that, you understand - were simply too much for me and I wanted to retire. My sister had died a few months before and left me this bungalow. My last couple of weeks at the cottage were as different again. No need to stage any more rows to put me off the scent. They didn’t bother to conceal how they felt. Didn’t even seem to think there was anything wrong. It was so natural for them, you see . . . just an extension of their close feelings. They couldn’t understand why I had to leave. Why I wasn’t happy for them both. I did try once or twice considering the possibility of staying on . . . they were still my babies in a way and I had promised their mother I’d look after them, but then one day Katherine started talking about their European tour. Oh they were going here . . . they were going there . . . I don’t know where they weren’t going. I asked then, “Who’s paying for all this?” And she said, “Henry, of course.” And Michael said, “Kate can get Henry to do anything.”

‘They were standing together at the time behind the kitchen table, arms around each other’s waists. And I suddenly realized how strong they were . . . They fed off each other. You could almost see it . . . energy flowing to and fro between them . . . doubling . . . doubling in strength. And I felt afraid. I thought, there’ll be no stopping them. Whatever they want . . .

‘Someone sent me the paper with the inquest on Mrs Trace. It seemed an accident clear enough. But then there was the engagement and when I heard Miss Simpson had died I couldn’t help wondering . . . Perhaps if I’d got in touch with the police the third death might not have happened. But I didn’t
know
, you see . . . it was just a feeling. And how could I have betrayed them? I loved them, you see . . . Madelaine’s children.’

There was a long pause. Miss Bellringer nodded gravely. ‘I begin to understand.’ She poured herself a little more whisky and continued, ‘But I still don’t see how Bella could have been killed by either of them.’

‘Neither did I at first. I read the report until I knew it by heart. And it tallied so perfectly with Phyllis Cadell’s confession that there seemed to be little reason to look further. And yet there was something about it that didn’t quite fit and it nagged at me for days before I realized what it was. Now, I’m not a sporting man but it seems to me that the place for a beater is ahead of the guns.
So why were Michael Lacey and Mrs Trace together?
Come to that what was he doing out there in the first place? He told me some story about earning money but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. He was there to peel Mrs Trace off from the rest of the party. To isolate her so that she became a very clear target indeed; a sitting duck, in other words. Katherine was in the undergrowth - don’t forget we only have her brother’s word for it that she was in the kitchen at Tye House - and at a prearranged time, no doubt with a certain amount of leeway on either side, the murder was committed.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Both the Laceys were experienced shots. Mrs Rainbird told me so. And of course with all the kerfuffle with the dogs and everyone racing about she just slipped quietly away through the trees. And Michael, all eagerness to help, went racing off to phone for an ambulance. And now comes the second thing that struck me as odd. Surely, in an emergency, you dash up the nearest driveway and bang on the door, but Lacey went to Tye House. Almost as far as you could get from the spot where the accident occurred. Why did he not go to the first house in Church Lane? Or Holly Cottage, which would have been even nearer? There can only be one reason. Because he wished to delay the ambulance as long as possible. The last thing they wanted was an efficient team on the spot in no time, perhaps saving Bella’s life.’

‘Yes . . . I can see that it could well have been that way . . .’ So enthralling had Miss Bellringer found Barnaby’s recital that she had frozen into attention with a square of plum cake halfway between her plate and her mouth. She now popped the cake in and continued, whilst munching, ‘But then . . . why Phyllis?’

‘Well, not surprisingly, considering the terrible emotional pressure she was under, her lack of practice with a gun coupled with the vodka she’d consumed, Miss Cadell missed. By half a mile I shouldn’t wonder. But by one of those dreadful coincidences that sometimes happen and change our lives by doing so, Bella stumbled over a tree root as Phyllis fired. Lessiter mentioned at the inquest that Mrs Trace had already fallen once. There can be no other explanation.’

‘But . . . if Dennis saw what happened he must have seen Bella get up again. After Phyllis ran away, I mean.’

‘I should imagine so. That’s something we shall find out when he’s fit to be questioned. But I wouldn’t put it past either of them to bleed someone white, knowing them to be innocent.’

‘How absolutely appalling.’ Miss Bellringer looked anxiously around her exuberant room as if testing it for pregnability. She bent down and picked up Wellington, holding him to her flat chest like a charm. Four resentful feet stuck stiffly out. ‘And Bella’s murder . . . was this the first step in some grand design?’

‘Certainly. They left a letter. Everything clearly explained.’ Bold black writing boiling with anger. The only word of sorrow or regret in the whole seven pages was that they had not been able to deny themselves a brief visit to their secret place that fatal Friday afternoon. No point in wounding his elderly companion by repeating the names they called her innocent friend. ‘I believe it was you, Miss Bellringer, who used the term “bad blood”. I remember thinking at the time how melodramatic it sounded. As if wickedness could be passed on genetically, like blue eyes or red hair. But now . . . I’m not so sure. It’s all so reminiscent of the father’s behaviour. Using people with absolute callousness and then walking away from the pain and unhappiness to the next mark.’