The Killings at Badger's Drift (4 page)

Chief Inspector Barnaby rearranged his paste and strips and finished telling his wife about Miss Bellringer and Miss Simpson.

‘It’s an intriguing story, darling.’ Mrs Barnaby lowered her knitting, an exquisite puffball of silky creamy wool. ‘I wonder what she could have seen?’ Her husband shrugged. She was not deceived by the casualness of the gesture. ‘I suppose your next step will be to talk to the doctor?’

‘That’s right.’ Barnaby laid down his knife and fork. You could ask just so much from ordinarily tempered cutlery. ‘Probably after his evening surgery, so I might be late again. Don’t worry about keeping anything hot. I’ll eat out.’

 

‘You may go in now.’

Barnaby had turned up, at Doctor Lessiter’s suggestion, at eleven the following morning. He entered the consulting room to find the doctor seated behind his desk and as busy as a bee. All through their conversation his fingers were never still: fiddling with pencils, tidying a stack of pharmaceutical literature, pulling down his cuffs or just drumming away on his blotter. He glanced quickly at the chief inspector’s warrant card.

‘Well . . . er . . . Barnaby’ - he handed it back - ‘I can’t give you long.’ He didn’t invite the other man to sit down. The chief inspector explained the reason for his visit.

‘Don’t see any problem there. Elderly lady, bad fall, too much for her heart. A very common problem.’

‘I assume you attended Miss Simpson at some time during the two weeks before her death?’

‘Oh yes indeed. You can’t catch me out, Inspector. The death would have been reported otherwise. I know the law as well as you do.’

Leaving this unlikely possibility aside, Barnaby asked, ‘For what reason?’

‘She had a touch of bronchitis. Nothing serious.’

‘She didn’t die of bronchitis, surely?’

‘What are you implying?’

‘I’m not implying anything, Doctor Lessiter. I’m simply asking you a question.’

‘The cause of death, which occurred several hours before she was discovered, was heart failure. As I’ve already stated. The bruise was a large one. She must have fallen quite heavily. This sort of shock can be fatal.’

‘I can see that would be the natural deduction -’

‘Diagnosis.’

‘- and that you would not be looking for anything untoward. Perfectly natural under the circumstances. But if you could cast your mind back for a moment was there nothing which perhaps’ - he searched for the most tactful phrase - ‘didn’t quite fit?’

‘Nothing.’

But there had been a brief hesitation. And a note in the doctor’s voice that ran counter to the strong negative. Barnaby waited. Doctor Lessiter puffed out his cheeks. His head was as round as a turnip and his cheeks the colour of russet apples. His nose was reddish too and thin crimson threads fanned out over his eyeballs. Lurking behind the acceptable aroma of soap, antiseptic and strong mints the chief inspector thought he could detect a whiff of whisky. Doctor Lessiter’s hands took a break and rested on his pot belly. When he spoke his tone was judicial, implying that he had finally decided that Barnaby could be trusted.

‘Well . . . there was something . . . oh hardly worth mentioning, really. There was rather a funny smell.’

‘What sort of smell?’

‘Umm . . . like mice.’

‘That’s not surprising in an old cottage. Especially if she didn’t have a cat.’

‘I didn’t say it
was
mice. I said it was like mice. That’s the nearest point of comparison I can make.’ Doctor Lessiter rose, a fraction unsteadily, to his feet. ‘And now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a very busy day ahead.’ He pressed the buzzer and moments later Barnaby found himself in the open air.

The surgery was behind the house, a splendid Victorian villa. He walked down the long gravel drive and entered a narrow lane bordered by hawthorn and cow parsley. It was a lovely sunny day. He broke off a bit of hawthorn and chewed it as he walked. Bread and cheese they had called it when he was a lad. He remembered biting into the sweet green buds. It didn’t taste the same now. Bit late in the year, perhaps.

Badger’s Drift was in the shape of a letter T. The cross bar, called simply the Street, had a crescent of breeze-block council houses, a few private dwellings, the Black Boy pub, a phone box and a very large and beautiful Georgian house. This was painted a pale apricot colour and almost smothered on one side by a vast magnolia. Behind the house were several farm buildings and two huge silos. The post office was a two-up two-down, no doubt suitably fortified, called Izercummin, which doubled as the village shop.

Barnaby turned into the main leg of the T. Church Lane was not as long as the Street and ran very quickly into open country - miles and miles of wheat and barley bisected at one point by a rectangular blaze of rape. The church was thirteenth-century stone and flint, the church hall twentieth-century brick and corrugated iron.

As Barnaby strolled along he felt more and more strongly that he was being watched. A stranger in a small community is always an object of keen interest and he had seen more than one curtain twitch as he passed by. Now, although the lane behind him appeared to be deserted, he felt a spot of tension develop at the base of his neck. He turned. No one. Then he saw a rainbow of light bobbing near his feet and looked up. In the loft window of an opulent bungalow close to the Black Boy a prism of light flashed and a face turned quickly away.

Miss Bellringer lived in a small modern house at the end of the lane. Barnaby walked up the narrow path of pea shingle encroached by a tangle of luxurious vegetation. Rhododendrons, laurel, hypericum, roses all running amok in all directions. On the front door was an iron bull’s head and a notice in a clear plastic envelope which read KNOCK LOUDLY. He knocked loudly.

Immediately a voice yelled: ‘Don’t do that!’ There was a heavy bang as if a piece of furniture had fallen over, a shuffling sound, and Miss Bellringer opened the door. She said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s Wellington. Do come in.’

She led the way into a cluttered sitting room and started to pick up a pile of books from the floor. The chief inspector crouched to help. All the books were very heavy. ‘They will climb, you see. I don’t know who first put the idea about that cats are sure footed. They can never have owned one. He’s always knocking stuff about.’

Barnaby spotted Wellington, a solid cat the colour of iron filings, with four white socks, on top of a grand piano. The name seemed apt. He had a face like an old boot, squashed in, tuckered and rumpled. He watched them re-stacking the books. He looked secretive and ironical. A cat who was biding his time.

‘Please’ - Miss Bellringer waved an arm, just missing a group of photographs - ‘sit down.’

Barnaby removed a pile of sheet music, a painted terracotta duck and a tin of toffees from a wing chair and sat down.

‘Well, Chief Inspector . . .’ She sat opposite him on a Victorian love seat and clasped her knees (she was wearing copper-coloured knickerbockers), ‘What’ve you found out?’

‘Well,’ echoed Barnaby, ‘there was certainly something troubling your friend.’

‘I knew it!’ She slapped a brocaded thigh, sending up a little puff of dust. ‘What did I tell you?’

‘Unfortunately there seems to be no way of discovering what it was.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

As Barnaby described his meeting with Terry Bazely he glanced around the room. It was large and crammed from floor to ceiling with books and ornaments, dried flowers and plants. Three of the shelves held old Penguin crime classics with the green and white covers. There was a huge primitive stone head in the fireplace, magnificent Quad and Linn high-fidelity equipment, and a Ben Nicholson, festooned with cobwebs, hanging near the french windows.

‘And what do we do now?’ She gazed at him, clear-eyed and expectant, sitting forward on the very edge of her seat, ready for anything.

Barnaby found he was resenting her confidence. She seemed to regard him in the light of a conjuror. But his feelings about the case (if case there proved to be) were vague and nebulous. He had no rabbit to produce. He was not even sure he had the hat. ‘There’s nothing you can do, Miss Bellringer. I shall ask the police surgeon to have a look at the body. I shall need your permission for that -’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘If he sees no need to proceed further that will probably mean an end to the matter.’ He had expected her to be downcast at this remark but she nodded with vigorous approval.

‘Excellent. Brown’s is the undertaker. Kerridge Street. I’ll write a note.’ She did this quickly, using a broad-nibbed fountain pen filled with Indian ink, and heavy smooth cream paper. She handed him the envelope, saying, ‘I mustn’t keep you. You’ll let me know the outcome? And very well done, Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.’ Barnaby covered his mouth with his hand and coughed. As they turned towards the door Miss Bellringer picked up one of the photographs in a barbola frame. ‘Here is Emily. She was eighteen then. We’d just started teaching.’

Barnaby looked at the faded sepia print. It was a studio portrait. Lucy was standing next to a jardinière which held a potted palm. Emily sat on a stool. She was looking straight at the camera. Smooth fair hair coiled into a chignon, wide-apart eyes, her mouth firm. Her calf-length skirt and white blouse looked very crisp. Lucy was smiling broadly. Her bun of hair was lopsided and the hem of her skirt dipped slightly. One hand rested protectively on her friend’s shoulder.

‘What did you teach?’ Barnaby handed back the photograph.

‘My special subject was music. And Emily’s English. But we taught almost everything else of course. One did in those days.’ She accompanied him to the front door. ‘School’s gone now. Converted into flats. Full of horrible people from London.’

‘By the way’ - on the point of leaving Barnaby turned - ‘was your friend ever troubled by mice?’

‘Good heavens, no. The place was as clean as a whistle. Emily loathed mice. There were pellets everywhere. Good day to you, Chief Inspector.’

‘I don’t suppose Doctor Bullard’s on the premises?’

‘Actually he is, sir,’ replied the desk sergeant. ‘Been giving evidence at an inquest this morning then he went over to Forensic.’

From behind a glassed-in panel Policewoman Brierly called: ‘I saw him go across the yard for lunch.’

The canteen lay at the end of a large quadrangle. Everyone at the station moaned endlessly about the food which, to the chief inspector’s tortured palate, seemed positively Lucullan. They should try eating chez Barnaby, he thought, loading up with shepherd’s pie, soggy chips and livid mushy peas. That’d soon shut them up. He added a mincemeat slice and looked round, spotting the doctor alone at a table by the window.

‘Hello, Tom,’ said Doctor Bullard. ‘What brings you to these desperate straits?’

‘What brings you?’ said Barnaby, sitting down and tucking in.

‘My wife’s at her Ikebana class.’

‘Ah. I wanted to talk about something, actually.’

‘Talk away,’ replied the doctor, pushing aside the wreckage from a devilled haddock and considering a castle pudding.

‘An old lady had a fall and was found dead the next morning by the postman. Not, sadly, all that unusual. But she saw something, probably in the woods near her house, the afternoon before that distressed her considerably. So much so that she rang the Samaritans to talk about it but before she could say much someone came to the door. And that’s all we know.’

‘So . . . ?’ Doctor Bullard shrugged. ‘Slightly more unusual.’

‘I’d like you to have a look at her.’

‘Who signed the death certificate?’

‘Lessiter. Badger’s Drift.’

‘Ohhh . . .’ George Bullard blew out his cheeks and placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve trodden on his hand-made two-tones.’

‘What d’you think of him?’

‘Come on, Tom - you know better than that.’

‘Sorry.’

‘God, they don’t call these castle puddings for nothing, do they? This one’s completely impregnable.’ He stabbed at it then added, ‘I can tell you what’s common knowledge. That he has a lot of private patients and a pretty upmarket lifestyle. A definitely scrumptious second wife and a very unscrumptious daughter who must be about the same age as my Karen. Nearly nineteen.’

‘Can you look at the body this afternoon?’

‘Mm. I’ve got a hospital call at three, though, so we’d have to go straight away.’

There were only two funeral parlours in Causton. Brown’s was thought to be the more select. The other was the Co-op. Brown’s front window was padded with crumpled satin in the very centre of which was an urn of shiny black basalt holding several lilies. Engraved on the urn was: Til the Dawn Breaks and Shadows Flee Away. Parked in a space adjacent to the building was a new silver Porsche 924, sparkling in the sunshine.

‘Beautiful.’ Doctor Bullard stroked it appreciatively. ‘Nought to sixty in nine seconds.’

Barnaby imagined himself jammed into one of the low seats. The red and black chequered upholstery seemed to him hideously unattractive. He realized that he would always be, philosophically as well as incrementally, a middle-of-the range-family-saloon man. ‘I’d no idea these fellows were so well paid,’ he said, pushing open the glass-panelled door.

‘No short time either,’ replied the doctor jovially. ‘The one thing you can always be sure people are going to do is pop off.’

The bell rang with subdued and appropriate gravity. It disturbed only one occupant: a young man, almost colourless in appearance, who flowed through some deep velvet curtains at the back of the room. He wore a black suit and had a pale skin, pale straight hair, pale hands and pale, hard-boiled lemony eyes, like acid drops. About to give them extreme unction, he took a second look and rearranged his expression. ‘Doctor Bullard isn’t it?’