Troy sat grinding his teeth. He had been with Barnaby all along the line in this case. Heard all the interviews, had access to forensic results. What Barnaby saw and knew he, Troy, saw and knew. And it infuriated him to hear his chief speak with such easy certainty of conclusions reached. Troy slammed his fist at the dashboard and winced with pain. Where had he gone astray? Was he looking at things from completely the wrong angle? That might be it. A spot of lateral thinking; try a new slant. He would do a bit of Chinese breathing, go calmly back to the beginning and start again.
Barnaby stood square in the centre of the cardinal-red polished step, lifted the tail of the mermaid knocker and let it drop. An old lady opened the door. She looked at him, over his shoulder at the car and back at his face again. She looked immeasurably sad and very tired.
Barnaby said, ‘Mrs Sharpe?’
‘Come in,’ she said, turning her face away. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
PART FOUR
CONCLUSION
Chapter One
As the car sped along through the pallid genteel streets and out into the Sussex countryside Barnaby reviewed what, in spite of the number of deaths, he would always think of as the Simpson case. He had arrived at a solution which he knew must be the true one and the puzzle was complete but for one small segment. He recalled the scene in question. He remembered it so vividly, almost word for word. The trouble with this small segment was that it made nonsense of his conclusions. Yet he could not ignore the scene or pretend that it had never happened. Somehow or other it must be made to fit.
Troy eased up a little as they re-entered Tunbridge Wells. The man really drove very well, thought Barnaby. For all his occasional reprimands about his sergeant’s dashing over-exuberant style Barnaby acknowledged Troy’s skill and road sense. Watching now, noting how frequently he checked the road behind; mirror to road, road to mirror, mirror to -
‘But that’s it!’
‘Sir?’ Troy’s eyes slid, for a fraction of a second, over to his chief. Barnaby did not reply. Troy, whose Chinese breathing and circumvolutions had got him absolutely nowhere, did not pursue the matter. He was determined not to give the old devil the satisfaction of responding with wide-eyed and eager questions. No doubt all would be revealed when he judged the time to be right. Till then, thought Troy, his brilliant deductions could stew in their own juice. ‘Straight to Causton is it?’
‘No,’ replied Barnaby. ‘I’ve been up since half-past five and I’m starving. We’ll stop off at Reading for some lunch. There’s no hurry now.’
He remembered those words afterwards and for a very long time to come. But he had no way of knowing that, in the town they had so recently left behind, an old lady was lifting a telephone and, with tears streaming down her face, dialling a number at Badger’s Drift.
The marquee was the size of a barrage balloon. It billowed and flapped whilst half a dozen men struggled with pegs and hammers to tether it down. Two dozen crates of champagne and twelve trestle tables stood nearby together with a tottery mountain of interlocking bentwood chairs. Under the canvas the exquisitely nurtured aristocratic green, trampled by heavy boots, was already giving off that enclosed warm smell redolent of a thousand refreshment tents - a scent of tea urns and sweet hay and freshly cut bread.
As Barnaby walked down the terrace steps for the last time he saw Henry Trace wheeling himself between florists and caterers; nodding, smiling, pointing, getting in the way. Even from a distance of several feet his happiness was tangible. Barnaby looked around for Katherine Lacey.
‘Why, Chief Inspector.’ Henry propelled himself skilfully across the flagstones. ‘How nice. Have you come to wish us joy?’ His smile faded as he saw the policeman’s face. He stopped his chair some little distance away as if this gap might somehow mitigate whatever tidings Barnaby had brought.
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Trace, but I have some bad news.’
‘Is it about Phyllis? I already know . . . they rang up. I’m afraid it looks a bit insensitive going ahead here but everything was so advanced’ - he gestured across the lawn - ‘that I decided . . .’ His voice ran down. There was a long pause whilst he stared at the two men, dread gathering in his eyes.
Barnaby spoke for a few moments, gently, knowing there was no way to make the cruel words merciful. Troy, who had always hoped that one day he would be in a position to see a member of the upper crust getting their comeuppance, found himself looking away from the shrunken figure in the wheelchair.
‘Can you give me any idea of Miss Lacey’s whereabouts?’ Barnaby waited, repeated his question and waited again. He was about to ask it a third time when Henry Trace said, ‘She’s gone over to the cottage . . .’ His voice was unrecognizable. ‘Someone rang up . . .’
‘What! Did she say who it was?’
‘No. I took the call . . . it was a woman . . . in some distress I think. She sounded very old.’
‘Jesus!’ Even as he spoke Barnaby started to move. Troy ran alongside. ‘Leave the car . . . quicker through the spinney.’
They cut through the garden of Tranquillada, past the startled constable, and crashed through the hedge to the spinney. Barnaby tore at the hazels and forced his way through into the woods. He ran like the wind, kicking sticks and everything else out of his way savagely. Troy heard him mutter, ‘Bloody fool . . . bloody bloody fool.’ And, not knowing who or what Barnaby meant, felt himself caught up in the slipstream of urgency engendered by the other man’s flight.
Back on the terrace Henry Trace slumped in the chair. The bustling continued around him unabated. Boxes of champagne flutes went by and a hamper of napery. A pretty girl in a pink overall was wiring white carnations into an arch over the door. She was singing. Henry closed his eyes and braced himself for another wave of pain. It came in quietly but in no time was tearing at him with vicious ferocity.
‘Excuse me, sir . . . ?’ Pause. ‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m just going to do the gypsophila. I thought it’d look rather pretty wound through the balustrades then sort of tumbling down the steps . . . ?’
He looked at her, then across at the marquee which was now gaily decorated with bunting. People were hurrying about, calling to each other. The mountain of chairs was being dismantled and carried into the tent. He must do something to stop the momentum. Even as he prayed there was some mistake he knew there was no mistake. Everything Barnaby had told him fitted. Everything must be true. But what could he say to the girl? He looked at her kind smiling face.
‘Yes,’ he said, turning his chair to go indoors, ‘tumbling down the steps will be fine.’
Chapter Two
‘Take the kitchen,’ cried Barnaby, ‘I’ll check upstairs.’
All three bedrooms were empty and looked just as they had before: the little single bed still straining pristinely for effect, the double a tangled mess. Barnaby checked the wardrobe and was just opening a large trunk on the landing when he heard Troy cry out. He flew down the stairs and found his sergeant standing in the studio in front of the easel. He looked completely stupefied.
‘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 ot
her 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.
Chapter Three
‘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.’
The Killings at Badger's Drift Page 23