The Killings at Badger's Drift (9 page)

Barnaby was getting to know the surgery rather well. He had visited it again the previous day to inform the doctor of the post-mortem findings. The news had not been well received. Trevor Lessiter had looked at him incredulously, saying, much as George Bullard had done, ‘
Hemlock?
’ and dropped like a stone into his chair. He then so far forgot himself as to indicate to Barnaby that he should also be seated. Even his fingers were temporarily stilled.

‘And what put you on to that if I’m not being too inquisitive?’ Already he was on the defensive.

‘We were asked to look into the matter.’

‘Who by? That loopy old hag down the lane, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He noticed Barnaby’s slight change of expression and made a visible effort to calm down. ‘It would have been courteous of you to let me know.’

‘We are letting you know, sir.’

‘I mean before this, as I’m sure you damn well realize.’

Approaching footsteps recalled Barnaby to the present. A girl opened the door. Remembering Doctor Bullard’s description of a ‘not so scrumptious’ daughter, Barnaby immediately assumed that this must be she: short, not much over five feet, and dumpy. Her complexion had a thick, soupy texture and there was a fuzz of down on her top lip, her hair was coarse but full of vitality, springing up into a wiry halo around her head. She had large, rather beautiful hazel eyes which she blinked rapidly from time to time. This habit gave her a timorous yet slightly defiant demeanour: the sort of girl who made a career out of being insecure.

Barnaby stated their business and was admitted. He followed Judy Lessiter across the hall. Her legs, emerging from a shapeless pinafore dress, were really remarkable: hugely wide at the knees then tapering off into sparrow-thin ankles, like upended skittles. She pushed at the sitting-room door and went in, Barnaby close behind.

Doctor Lessiter looked up, then flung his
Telegraph
down with some annoyance. ‘Good grief - I thought I’d seen the last of you lot.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, but this sort of inquiry is quite usual -’

‘Turning the whole village upside down.’

‘In the case of an unexplained death -’

‘The woman picked some hemlock by mistake. There’s a large field of it just beyond Church Lane. The seeds blow everywhere. Obviously some went into the garden and took root. I’ve never known such a palaver.’

‘We are asking everyone in the village to account for their movements on the day in question. That is last Friday the seventeenth of July, afternoon and evening.’

The doctor gave an irritated little snort, threw his paper down and stood with his back to them, staring into the fireplace. ‘Well . . . if we must. On my rounds in the afternoons . . . then in the even—’

‘Your rounds are Tuesday and Thursday, Daddy.’ Judy’s tone was calm and reasonable but Barnaby thought he detected a rather unpleasant smile plucking the corners of her mouth.

‘What? Oh . . . yes . . . sorry.’ He picked up a magazine from the log basket and started to flick through it, illustrating his lack of concern. ‘I was here, of course. Bit of gardening but mainly watching the final Test. What a game that was . . . superb bowling . . .’

‘And the evening?’

‘Still there, I’m afraid. A dull day really.’

‘And your wife was with you on both of these occasions?’

‘Part of the evening. She was shopping in the afternoon.’

‘Thank you. Miss Lessiter?’

‘I was working during the day. I’m a librarian. At Pinner.’

‘And in the evening?’

‘. . . here . . .’

Both policemen noticed the rather theatrical start of surprise the doctor gave at this remark, as no doubt they were meant to. Tit for tat, thought Barnaby.

‘Well . . .’ she elaborated, ‘I did go out for a bit of a walk . . . it was such lovely weather.’

‘Do you remember what time that was?’

‘Sorry, no. I wasn’t out long.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Just down Church Lane, past the fields for about half a mile, then back.’

‘Did you meet anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear or notice anything out of the ordinary when you were passing Beehive Cottage?’

‘No . . . I think the curtains were closed.’

‘And what time did you return?’

She gave a couldn’t-care-less shrug.

‘Can you be of any help here, Doctor Lessiter?’ asked Barnaby.

‘No.’ The doctor had returned to the settee and reimmersed himself in his newspaper. Barnaby was just about to ask if he could see Mrs Lessiter when she appeared in the doorway behind him. He was made aware of this by a sudden change in the atmosphere. The doctor, after a glance over Barnaby’s shoulder, started reading his paper with a degree of intensity which could only be feigned, Judy glowered at no one in particular and the blood heated up and zipped around under Sergeant Troy’s almost transparent skin, staining it an unbecoming bright pink.

‘I thought I heard voices.’

She dropped into the armchair by the window, put her feet up on a tiny footstool and smiled at the two policemen. She could have stepped straight out of one of his centrefolds, Troy thought, eyeing the ripe curves pressing against a terry-towelling jump suit, the tumbling hair and glossy fondant lips. Her slender tanned feet were in high-heeled golden sandals. Barnaby thought she was not as young as all that hard work and hard cash would have you believe. Not early thirties but mid, maybe even late forties.

In reply to his question she said that in the afternoon she had been in Causton shopping and in the evening she was at home except for a short period when she had gone out for a drive.

‘Was that for any special purpose?’

‘No . . . well . . . to be honest we’d had a little tiff, hadn’t we, Pookie?’

‘I hardly think our domestic squabbles are of any interest to the police, my dear -’

‘I overspent my dress allowance and he got cross so I took the Jaguar and drove around for a bit till I thought he’d’ve cooled down. Then I came home.’

‘And this was?’

‘Was Miss Lessiter here when you returned?’

‘Judy?’ She frowned at the girl in an impersonal way, as if wondering what she was doing in the place at all. ‘I’ve no idea. She spends a lot of time in her room. Adolescents do, you know.’

Barnaby could not think of the figure now lumpily taking up half a settee as an adolescent. The word implied not just a lack of confidence, ungainliness and a personality in a state of flux but fragility (if only of the ego) and youth. Judy Lessiter looked as if she had been born middle aged.

‘You didn’t stop anywhere, Mrs Lessiter? For a drink perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Well, thank you.’ As Barnaby rose he heard the flap of the letter box. Judy heaved herself up from the sofa and lolloped out of the room. Her stepmother glanced at Barnaby.

‘She’s in love. Every time the post arrives or the phone rings we get a touch of drama.’ Her shiny unkind smile included all three men. It said: isn’t she ridiculous? As if anyone would. ‘A dreadful man too, but devastatingly attractive, which makes things worse.’

Trevor Lessiter’s knuckles whitened over the newsprint. Judy returned with a handful of letters. She threw one into Barbara’s lap and dropped the rest down the inside of the
Daily Telegraph
chute. Her father clicked his tongue with annoyance.

When they left the house Barnaby stopped to admire a spectacular Madame le Coultre clematis climbing up the portico. Before he walked on he looked back through the window of the room they had just left. Barbara Lessiter, standing now, was staring out unseeingly into the garden. Her face was a mask of fear. As Barnaby watched she crumpled a letter into a tight ball and thrust it into the pocket of her suit.

 

‘What’s the matter, Stepmamma?’

‘Nothing.’ Barbara moved back to the armchair. She was longing for some strong black coffee. Everything was on a low table in front of the sofa. But she wouldn’t trust her shaking hands.

‘You’re white as the proverbial sheet under all that plaster of Paris.’ Judy stared at the older woman. ‘You’re not pregnant are you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not,’ echoed Judy. ‘You’re well past it, aren’t you?’

‘Have you got a cigarette, Trevor?’

Her husband, not looking up from his paper, replied, ‘There’s some in a box on my writing desk.’

Barbara took one, tapping it so furiously on the lid it almost snapped. She lit it with a silver football and stood smoking at the window, her back to them. The silence, packed with unspoken animosities, lengthened.

Judy Lessiter directed her burning gaze at her father’s paper shield. She would have liked to burn straight through it like a magnified ray from the sun. To see it brown and blacken and flake away, leaving a hole for his stupid astonished face to peer through.

It was now five years since that shattering day when they had both turned up on the doorstep with matching gold bands. He had been away from home the night before, telling her he was at the bedside of a dying patient. She had been unable to forgive him for this lie which she felt was utterly despicable. She wasn’t even sure if she still loved him. Certainly her pleasure in observing his day-to-day discomfiture augured strongly against it.

From the very first she had resisted strongly Barbara’s rather half-hearted suggestions about clothes and makeup and alterations to her room. She liked her room the way it had always been - old toys, patchwork quilt, school books and all - and found Barbara’s suggestions on how to make it more feminine (ruffled curtains, soppy Pierrot wallpaper and oyster shag-pile carpet) quite nauseating. She was also, she told herself, far too intelligent to be taken in by the stupid magazines Barbara spent half her life reading. As if a new you could be found by starving the old you half to death then tearing the eyebrows out of what was left. But the motherly advice hadn’t lasted long and Barbara had soon slipped into the daily routine that had continued ever since. Giving orders to the daily help, visiting her hairdresser, health club and dress shops and lying about the house studying what Judy called ‘
Harpies Bizarre
and other gorgoneia’.

Judy was not happy. She had not been happy since the day her mother died. Not, that is, in the fearless uncomplicated way an only child of two loving parents is happy. But the unhappiness of the other two gave her a curious sort of comfort. And then there was Michael Lacey. Or rather there wasn’t. And would never be. That was something she would have to keep repeating every time the little worm of hope wriggled in her heart. Not only because of his looks (even after the accident he still had the most wonderful face) but because of his work. A painter must be free. Only last week he told her he was going to travel; to study in Venice, Florence and Spain. Full of anguish she had cried, ‘When, when!’ but he had simply shrugged, saying, ‘One day . . . soon.’ Since her engagement his sister Katherine was hardly ever at home and Judy walked over to the cottage sometimes, cleaned up a bit, made some coffee. Not too often. She tried to space her visits widely with the secret hope that he might start to miss her.

Two weeks ago he had taken her arm and led her over to a window. He had held her chin and studied her face, then said, ‘I’d like to paint you. You have amazing eyes.’ He had spoken almost clinically, as if he were a sculptor and she a promising lump of stone, but Judy’s heart had melted in her breast (A New You!) and her dreams, refurbished, gained in strength. He hadn’t mentioned it again. She had walked over a few evenings ago, seen through the window that he was working and, lacking the courage to disturb him, crept quietly away. She had not returned, afraid that an unwanted visit might try his patience and bring about what she dreaded most of all, a definite dismissal.

Trevor Lessiter watched his daughter, miles away as usual, as he folded up his
Telegraph
. He wondered what she was thinking and how it was possible to miss someone so much when you saw them every day. He was glad she had not been driven, despite his wife’s heavy hints, to find a flat in Pinner ‘to be nearer work’. Judy did nothing now in the house. She who had always taken such a pride in polishing her mother’s things and arranging flowers. Now whatever Mrs Holland couldn’t manage got left. And whenever he and Barbara bickered (nearly all the time lately, it seemed), he saw a relish in Judy’s eyes which he found deeply wounding. He knew she was thinking ‘serve him right’. He looked at his wife, at the heavy breasts and narrow waist, and felt dizzy with lust. Not love. He recognized now that he no longer loved her, indeed wondered if he ever had, but she still had the power. So much power. If only he could talk to Judy. Try to make her understand how he had been driven, almost tricked, into marriage. Surely now she was herself in love she would understand. But he shrank from such an attempt. Young people were invariably disturbed, even offended, by revelations of their parents’ sexuality. And her persistent indifference and unkindness were now provoking a similar reaction in him. Something he would not have believed possible a few years ago.

He remembered how, after her mother died, she would wait up for him to return from a night call and heat up some Ovaltine, then sit with him to make sure he drank it. She took all his messages neatly and accurately and listened to his patients rambling on with as much kindness as his wife would have shown. Looking across at her sad sulky face, it seemed to him that he had thrown away something of unique worth and replaced it with shoddy.

Barbara Lessiter felt the hard paper ball pressing on her thigh when she moved. She wondered, for the millionth time in the last five minutes, where the hell she was going to find five thousand pounds.

‘Where to now, sir?’

‘Well, there’s Mrs Quine in Burnham Crescent . . .’

‘I thought the others were doing the council houses.’