The Killings at Badger's Drift

by Caroline Graham

  ‘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.’

  ‘Yes. I often do these days,’ he smiled at Barnaby. ‘She was certainly here when I woke.’ As he was speaking two black and gold vans - ‘Lazenby et cie’ - crunched over the gravel and through the main gate.

  ‘It’s the caterers,’ cried Katherine. ‘I’d better go—’

  ‘Actually, Miss Lacey, I did want a further word . . .’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at her fiancé uncertainly.


  ‘Don’t worry - I’ll go.’ Henry Trace pushed himself away, making for the wooden ramp by the terrace steps. Katherine followed him slowly, Barnaby by her side, Troy bringing up a salivatory rear.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Barnaby, ‘if you remember the day Mrs Trace died?’

  ‘Bella? Of course I do.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘It’s not the kind of thing one forgets in a hurry. It was terrible.’

  ‘I understand that you were not a member of the party?’

  ‘No. I stayed here, preparing the tea. Usually Phyllis helped but on that day she went out with the shoot.’

  ‘That was unusual, was it?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘So the first you knew about the tragedy . . . ?’

  ‘Was when Michael came racing in, grabbed the phone and shouted down it for an ambulance.’

  ‘I see. Would you say . . .’ - he hesitated, picking the words over carefully in his mind - ‘that Mr and Mrs Trace were happy?’

  ‘Well . . . yes . . . they always seemed so to me. Although of course outsiders never really know, do they? They were both very kind to Michael and myself. And Henry was absolutely distraught when she died.’

  Barnaby turned and looked back over the line of poplars and wooded ground beyond. ‘Was it over there the accident happened?’

  Katherine followed his gaze. ‘Oh no . . . in the beechwoods that lie behind Holly Cottage.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you again.’

  They had reached the terraced steps by now and walked up them together. As they crossed the yard Benjy made a sound from the doorstep and staggered to his feet. Katherine turned away from the sight.

  ‘Oh, why won’t he eat!’ she burst out passionately to the two men. ‘I bought him everything - lovely meat, biscuits. He’s got his own basket and blanket and dish - everything he had over there . . .’

  ‘They pine, I’m afraid,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘But you’d think they’d want to stay alive, however sad they are.’

  ‘He’s a pretty old dog, miss,’ said Troy sympathetically. ‘I think he’s just tired. He’s had enough.’

  ‘Are you through with Katherine, Chief Inspector? I really need her over here.’

  ‘Well - that’s that,’ sighed Barnaby a few moments later as they drove away. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope that Katherine Lacey and the Lessiter girl would have been wandering up and down Church Lane at the same time last Friday night.’

  ‘But . . . you do believe her, sir?’ asked Troy, still a little dazed by the rainbow lustre of the Lacey smile. ‘About the letter?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ll get it followed up of course but I’ve no doubt that she posted it when and where she says. If she’s innocent there’d be no point in making up such a story. And if she’s guilty she’d make doubly sure anything we could check on was genuine.’

  ‘Guilty.’ Troy unwisely took his eyes off the road to give Barnaby an incredulous glance and missed the opening to the Lessiters’ drive.

  ‘You really must give up this physiognomy, Troy. It can only hinder your career. She’s got more to lose than any of them.’

  ‘But the dog, sir. The dog didn’t bark.’

  ‘Yes, the dog’s a problem, I admit.’

  Or perhaps the dog wasn’t a problem, he thought as Troy reversed and drove up to the Lessiters’ front door. Perhaps the dog meant he could score a line through Katherine Lacey once and for all. One down, six to go. Or seven if he kept a really open mind and included the seemingly impossible Henry Trace. What about if he had fallen hopelessly in love with Katherine when his wife was still alive and had hired someone to lurk in the undergrowth and pop Bella off? Barnaby dragged his attention back to the present and reminded himself yet again that he had no reason to suppose that Mrs Trace’s death was anything but an accident. And that he was in fact now engaged in investigating something quite different.

  The doctor’s surgery still had fifteen minutes to run, which suited the chief inspector very well. Judy Lessiter opened the main door, looking even less attractive than she had the previous day. She had a frowsty air, like that of a small animal emerging after a long period of hibernation.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d like a word with your father—’

  ‘Surgery round the side.’ She started to close the door. Barnaby moved forward. ‘And with you also, please.’

  She stared at him sullenly for a moment then shrugged and led them into the kitchen. She turned to face them, leaning against the sink.

  ‘Miss Lessiter, you told me earlier that you were in the library during the afternoon of the seventeenth.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I checked your statement before coming here.’

  ‘I said I was at work. I don’t stand behind a counter stamping books. Part of my job is to visit schools, technical colleges . . . liaise with administrators, check if there are any projects that may mean ordering special books. On Friday afternoon I was at Gessler Tye primary school.’

  ‘I must say I feel that you have deliberately attempted to mislead us in this matter.’

  ‘That’s your problem,’ she said rudely.

  ‘So if you would go through your movements again?’

  ‘I take sandwiches for lunch. I ate them then—’

  ‘This is in the library at Pinner?’

  ‘Yes. Made some coffee. Drove to the school, arriving about two, and stayed till they finished around three forty-five. ’

  ‘And you then returned to the library?’

  ‘No. It hardly seemed worth it. I drove straight here . . . stopping off at the village shop for some cigarettes.’

  Jammy, thought Sergeant Troy, always convinced that everyone but himself, jobwise, was getting away with murder.

  ‘Your father will vouch for your time of arrival?’

  ‘My father?’ She looked puzzled, then wary.

  ‘He was here all afternoon, I understand.’

  There was a pause while she looked from Barnaby to Sergeant Troy and back again. ‘Is it a trick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean . . . are you trying to catch me out?’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Miss Lessiter. Your father has stated that he was at home all afternoon. I’m merely asking if he can corroborate your time of arrival.’

  ‘Well . . . I went straight upstairs . . . so . . . I wouldn’t have seen him.’

  ‘I see. And the evening?’

  ‘Oh I’ve nothing to change there. I just went for a walk, as I’ve already said.’

  ‘Down the lane, past the fields for about half a mile, then back?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you didn’t stop anywhere or call on anyone?’ He added quickly before she could speak, ‘Please think very carefully before you answer.’

  She stared at him. He looked serious, encouraging and, somehow, faintly knowledgeable. He could see she was wondering about the close re-questioning. ‘Well . . . I’m not sure I remember . . . exactly . . .’ She swallowed and chewed her bottom lip.

  ‘I know how difficult it must be to change a story, but if you need to now’s the time to do it. I must remind you that withholding information that may assist a police inquiry is a very serious matter.’

  ‘Oh but I’m not! Nothing that would help, that is . . .’

  ‘I think you should let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. She stopped leaning on the sink and stood upright looking taut and fearful, like someone preparing for a high dive. ‘I have . . . that is I’m friendly with Michael Lacey. At Holly Cottage. I hadn’t heard from him for a few days and . . . well, he said he wanted to paint me so I thought I’d . . . drop in . . . you know, to see when he wanted to start.’ Barnaby listened sympathetically. In trying to sound casual she had simply underlined her desperation. ‘So I walked up to the house but when I got there . . . I could see through the window that he was working—’

  ‘Whi
ch window was that?’

  ‘The front window by the porch.’

  ‘He doesn’t usually use that room, surely?’

  ‘Sometimes - in the evening. To get the last of the light.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Carry on.’

  ‘He gets very angry if he’s disturbed when he’s painting. He says it’s very hard to get back into the feel of it again. So I thought I’d better not . . . well . . . I just crept away.’

  ‘You think he didn’t know you were there?’

  ‘Oh I’m sure he didn’t. I was very quiet.’ She paused a moment then, looking at Barnaby for the first time, burst out, ‘You mustn’t believe what people say about Michael. They hate him here because he doesn’t care about things they all care about . . . petty, boring things. He’s a free spirit! As long as he can paint and walk in the woods and look at the sky . . . and he’s been so unhappy. Katherine’s so bourgeois - she only cares about material things - and now once the wedding’s over he’ll be all alone . . .’ There was a clarion note of hope in the last few words. For a moment her eyes shone so brilliantly that her rather stodgy face was transformed. Barnaby saw for the first time why Michael Lacey might have asked her to sit for him. He glanced at the clock over the kitchen door. Judy, as if already regretting her passionate declamation, presented her back to them and turned on both the taps. She stood watching the water bouncing off the gleaming metal, hearing the two sets of footsteps move to the door and cross the hall. She reduced the water to a thin colourless stream. The front door closed. She switched the taps off.

  Her hands trembled and she gripped the edge of the sink to still them. Talking about Michael always had this effect on her. Describing her abortive visit, her lack of courage and her humiliating retreat on tiptoe, had made her feel quite sick. But it had put the record straight, that was the main thing. She was glad about that. Especially after her silly attempt to be clever about her movements in the afternoon. Then she realized that her recent confession had brought about a secondary benefit. If Miss Simpson’s death had been due to foul play (and why else would there be all this questioning?) she had given Michael an alibi. He may well not care about this one way or the other but the fact could not be denied. She hugged this small service to her heart. Perhaps he would never know but it was something she could keep in reserve to be offered up if the right moment ever came.