The Killings at Badger's Drift (32 page)

‘Merde in your eye, folks.’

‘I was going to drink to Beatrice,’ replied Barnaby. His daughter was in the last week of rehearsals for
Much Ado
, happy to stay in Cambridge, even in the long vacation, if it meant getting her teeth into a good part.

Sartorially she seemed to have quietened down a bit whilst still looking definitely pantomimic. She wore a man’s tailored three-piece suit in grey and white chalk stripes dating from the early fifties and her hair, the colour of sloe gin, was cut in an Eton crop. There was a monocle pinned to her lapel. She looked aggressive, sexy and, because of her youth, rather touching. Barnaby thought she was softening up a bit. He had not discussed the dénouement of the Simpson case with Joyce, waiting until Cully was home, saving it for their first long meal together. And she had listened courteously, intent and thoughtful to the very end. Joyce now returned briefly to the subject.

‘I always thought that . . . um . . . that sort of thing . . . you know . . . only went on in . . . well . . . poorer families.’

‘Oh Ma, don’t be so mealy mouthed. If you mean working class why on earth don’t you say so? In any case not true. There are lots of examples, fact and fiction, of upper-class siblings having it off.’ Cully nibbled a florentine. ‘Just like poor Annabella.’

‘What?’ said Barnaby, placing his cup in his saucer with extreme care.

‘Pardon, dear, not what.’

‘Annabella. You know . . . in
Tis Pity
.’

‘No, I don’t know. Enlighten me.’

‘Honestly, Dad . . . I worked my guts out on that thing . . . it was the first big part I had . . .
Tis Pity She’s a Whore
. . . at the ADC. You came up to see it and now you don’t even remember.’

Yes, he remembered now. A dark stage lit with sudden flares of light from torches. Rich brocades and painted faces swirling out of the shadows. Terrible images of blood and death. His daughter in a white gown drenched with blood; daggers plunged again and again into living flesh; a heart held aloft at knife point. Horror upon horror, scenes prefiguring the death and destruction he had so recently beheld at Tranquillada. And, over and above all, the tragic pitiful incestuous passion of Annabella and her brother Giovanni. Barnaby saw again the little piecrust table in Beehive Cottage with the pile of books.
The Adventurous Gardener
, Shakespeare,
A Golden Treasury
. And the copy of Jacobean plays.

Cully spoke dreamily, her husky voice brimming with untold sadness, ‘One soul, one flesh, one love, one heart, one all . . .’

Barnaby gazed at her with fatherly pride and admiration. He picked up his cup again. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s about the size of it.’

 
 
 

 
The Killings at Badgers Drift

 

 
CAROLINE GRAHAM

 
 
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