Diana's hands were fluttering. She thrust them into the pockets of her jacket. "I believe Anne arranged it," she said. "You'll have to ask her."
"Thank you. Now, just one more thing. When you helped clear the rubbish from the ice house what exactlv was in there and what did you do with it?"
"It was ages ago," she said uncomfortably. "I can't remember. Nothing out of the way, just rubbish."
Walsh looked at her thoughtfully. "Describe the inside of the ice house to me, Mrs. Goode." He watched her eyes search rapidly amongst the photographs on the desk, but he had turned over all the general shots when she first came in. "How big is it? What shape is the doorway? What's the floor made of?"
"I can't remember."
He smiled a slow, satisfied smile and she was reminded of a stuffed timber wolf she had once seen with bared teeth and staring glass eyes. 'Thank you," he said. She was dismissed.
Chapter 6
Diana found Phoebe watching the ten o'clock news in the television room. The flickering colours from the set provided the only light and they played across Phoebe's glasses, hiding her eyes and giving her the look of a blind woman. Diana snapped on the table lamp.
"You'll get a headache," she said, flopping into the seat beside Phoebe, reaching out to stroke the softly tanned forearm.
Phoebe muted the sound of the television with the remote control on her lap, but left the picture running. "I've got one already," she admitted tiredly. She took off her glasses and held a handkerchief to her red-rimmed eyes. "Sorry," she said.
"What about?"
"Blubbing. I thought I'd grown out of it."
Diana pulled a footstool forward with her toes and settled her feet on it comfortably. "A good blub is one of my few remaining pleasures."
Phoebe smiled. "But not very helpful." She tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve and replaced her glasses.
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"I'm not hungry. Molly left a casserole in the Aga if you are."
"Mm, she told me before she left. I'm not hungry either."
They lapsed into silence.
"It's a bloody mess, isn't it?" said Phoebe after a while.
"I'm afraid so." Diana pushed her sandals off her feet and let them drop to the floor. "The Inspector's no fool." She kept her voice deliberately light.
Phoebe spoke harshly. "I hate him. How old would you say he is?"
"Late fifties."
"He hasn't aged much. He looked like a genial professor ten years ago." She considered for a moment. "But that's not his character. He's anything but genial. He's dangerous, Di. For God's sake don't forget it."
The other woman nodded. "And his incubus, Jock-the-Ripper? What did you make of him?"
Phoebe looked surprised as if the other woman had mentioned an irrelevance. "The Sergeant? He didn't say much. Why do you ask?"
With rhythmical movements, as if she were stroking a cat, Diana smoothed the woollen pile on the front of her jacket. "Anne's spoiling for a fight with him and I'm not sure why." She glanced speculatively at Phoebe, who shrugged. "She's making a mistake. She took one look at him in the drawing-room, labelled him 'Pig-ignorant' and made up her mind to walk all over him. Damn!" she said with feeling. "Why can't she learn to compromise occasionally? She'll have us up to our necks in shit if she's not careful."
"Have they spoken to her yet?"
"No, they've told her they'll talk to her tomorrow. They seem very relaxed about it all. We have their official permission to go to bed."
Phoebe closed her eyes and pressed long fingers against her temples. "What did they ask you?"
Diana twisted in her chair to look at her friend. "From what they implied, exactly what they asked you."
"Except that I walked out and refused to answer their questions." She opened her eyes and looked ruefully at the other woman. "I know," she said. "It was very silly of me but they made me so angry. Strange, isn't it? I stood up to hours of interrogation when David went. This time, I lasted five minutes. I found myself hating that man so much, I wanted to claw his eyes out. I could have done it, too."
Diana reached out again and briefly touched her arm. "I don't think it's strange-any psychiatrist would tell you that anger is a normal reaction to stress-but it's probably unwise." She pulled a face. "Anne will say I've bottled out, of course, but my view is we should give them all the co-operation we can. The sooner they sort it out and leave us alone, the better."
"They want to question the children."
"I know and I don't think we can prevent it."
"I could ask Jane's psychiatrist to write a report advising against it. Would that stop them?"
"For a day or two perhaps before they secured an order for a second opinion. That would declare her competent to answer questions. You know yourself, her own psychiatrist pronounced her fit eighteen months ago."
"Not for this." Phoebe massaged her temples vigorously. "I'm frightened, Di. I really think she's managed to blot it all out. If they make her remember now, God knows what will happen."
"Talk to Anne," Diana said. "She can be more objective than you. You may find that you're underestimating Jane's strengths. She is your daughter, after all."
"Meaning that I am less able to be objective?"
Go easy, Diana told herself. "Meaning that she will have inherited the rigid Gallagher backbone, you oaf."
"You're forgetting her father. However much I might like to pretend otherwise, there is some of David in each of them."
"He wasn't all bad, Pheeb."
Tears welled uncontrollably in Phoebe's eyes. She blinked them away angrily. "But he was, and you know it as well as I do. You told the Inspector so this afternoon and you were right. He was rotten to the core. In time, if we hadn't got shot of him, he'd have turned me and the children rotten too. He had a damn good try in all conscience." She was silent for a moment. "It's the only thing I hold against my parents. If they hadn't been so conventional I need never have married him. I could have had Johnny and brought him up on my own."
"It was difficult for them." But I agree with her, thought Diana. There was no excuse for what her parents did, so why am I defending them? "They did what they thought was right."
"I was seventeen, for Christ's sake—" Phoebe's nails bit deep into her palms—"younger than Jane is now. I allowed myself to be married off to a bastard twice my age simply because he'd seduced me, and then I just stood by and watched him rewarded for it. Christ," she spat, "it makes me sick to think of the money he bled from my father."
Then don't think about it, Diana wanted to say. You've tried to forget them, but there were good times, times at the beginning when Anne and I envied you because you were a woman and we were still gangling schoolgirls. One weekend in particular, it was still vivid in her memory, when David on some mad whim had taken the three of them on a business trip to Paris. She forgot which company he was working for, there had been so many, but the weekend she would never forget. David, so assured, so deft in his choice of where to go and what to do, so unaffected by the foreignness of it all; Phoebe, four months pregnant, lovely face framed in a glorious picture hat, so delighted with herself and with David; and Anne and Diana, out for half—term, in a fantasy of beautiful people in beautiful places. And it was fantasy, of course, for the reality of David Maybury was brutish, ugly—Diana had discovered that for herself—yet once, in Paris, they had known enchantment.
Phoebe stood abruptly, walked over to the television set and switched it off. She spoke with her back to Diana. "Do you know what kept me going through all those hours of police questioning last time? How it was I managed to stay so calm in spite of what they were accusing me of?" She turned round and Diana saw that the tears had stopped as suddenly as they had started. "It was relief, sheer bloody relief that I had got rid of the bastard so easily."
Diana glanced at the curtains. It was cold for a night in August, she thought, and Phoebe must have left the window open. "You're talking rubbish," she said fi
rmly. "The last ten years have addled your brain. There was nothing easy about getting rid of David. Good God, woman, he's been an albatross round your neck since the day you married him, still is." She pulled her jacket tighter about her. "If only they'd found a body somewhere that you could have identified."
"If pigs could fly," reflected Phoebe as she tidied the room and punched the cushions ferociously into airy plumpness.
Diana picked up an empty coffee cup and walked through into the kitchen. "They're concentrating their efforts on the ice house," she announced over her shoulder. She ran the tap and washed the cup. "They're working on the assumption that no one knows where it is." She heard the sound of the window being closed in the television room. "If I were you, I'd make a list of anyone you, David or the children have ever shown it to. I'm sure there'll be a lot of names."
Phoebe laughed bitterly and drew a scrap of paper from her pocket. "I've been racking my brains ever since I left the library. Result: Peter and Emma Barnes, and I can't swear to them."
"You mean the awful Dilys's children?"
"Yes. They used to roam about the garden during one school holidays, looking for Jonathan and Jane. I'm sure Dilys put them up to it as a way of getting in with us."
"But there must have been other children, Pheeb, in the early days."
"No, not even schoolfriends. Jon was boarding, remember, and never wanted friends to stay, and Jane never wanted friends full stop. It was my fault. I should have encouraged them but things were just so difficult that I was really glad they were anti-social."
"So what happened with Peter and Emma?"
"It all became rather unpleasant. Emma kept taking her knickers down in front of Jonathan." She shook her head. "I drew the line when he started taking his down, too. He was nine." She sighed. "Anyway, like a fool, I told David. So he promptly phoned Dilys and gave her an earful. He called her a vulgar bitch and said 'like mother, like daughter.' After that, they never came up here again, but I suppose Jon might have shown them the ice house before they were banned."
Diana gave a guilty giggle. "For once David was probably right. Emma hasn't improved much with the passing years, let's face it."
"He had no business to speak to anyone like that," said Phoebe coldly. "God knows, I can't stand the woman, but Jon was behaving as badly as Emma. David never even told him off for it. He thought it was a great joke, talked about Jon becoming a man. I could have killed him for that. If anyone was vulgar, David was."
Diana was disturbed by Phoebe's mood. She had known her to be bitter before but never with such a depth of feeling over something so petty. It was as if the events of the afternoon had caused a breach in her long-held defences, releasing the pent-up emotions of years. She saw the dangers of it only too clearly. She and Anne had thought of Jane as the weak link. Were they wrong? Was it not Phoebe, after all, who was the more vulnerable?
"You're tired, old thing," she said calmly, putting her arm through the other woman's. "Let's go to bed and sleep on it."
Phoebe's head drooped wearily. "I've got such'a bloody awful headache."
"Hardly surprising in the circumstances. Take some aspirin. You'll be a new woman in the morning."
They walked arm in arm down the corridor. "Did they ask you about Fred and Molly?" queried Phoebe suddenly.
"A bit."
"Oh, lord."
"Don't worry about it." They had reached the stairs. Diana gave her a kiss and released her. "Walsh also asked me to describe the ice house," she said with reluctance.
"I told you he was dangerous," said Phoebe, walking up the stairs.
Diana's footsteps were loud in the silence. The phrase "quiet as the grave" came to haunt her as she took off her shoes and tiptoed along the corridor. She eased Anne's door open and looked round it. Anne was at the desk, working at her word-processor. Diana whistled quietly to attract her attention, then pointed at the ceiling. Together they crept up the stairs to Anne's bedroom.
Anne followed her in, eyes alight with mischief and laughter. "My God, Di, this is so unlike you. You're always such a stickler for appearances. You do realise the place is still crawling with filth?"
"Don't be an idiot. It's not a game this time, so just shut up and listen."
She pushed Anne on to the bed and perched, cross-legged, beside her. As she spoke, her hands worked nervously, kneading and pummelling the softness of the duvet.
Chapter 7
The curtain was drawn aside and Phoebe Maybury appeared at the window. She stared out for a moment, her hair a fiery red where the lamplight caught it from behind, her eyes huge in her strained white face. Looking at her, George Walsh wondered what emotions had stirred her. Fear? Guilt? Madness even? There was something amiss in those staring eyes. She was so close he could have touched her. He held his breath. She reached out, caught the handle and pulled the window to. The curtain fell back into place and moments later the light was switched off. The murmur of Phoebe's and Diana's voices continued in the kitchen, but their words were no longer audible.
Walsh beckoned to McLoughlin, whom he could dimly see, and led the way on soft feet across the terrace and on to the grass. He had been keeping a wary eye on the lighted windows of Anne's wing where her silhouette, seated at her desk, showed up strongly against the curtains. She had changed position frequently in the last half hour, but had not moved from her seat. Walsh was as sure as he could be that his and McLoughlin's short spell of eavesdropping had been unobserved.
They set off silently in the direction of the ice house, McLoughlin lighting their way with a torch which he kept shaded with one hand. When Walsh judged them far enough away from the house to be unheard, he stopped and turned to his colleague. "What did you make of that, Andy?"
"I'd say we just heard the clearest admission of guilt we're ever likely to hear," the other threw out.
"Hm." Walsh chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "I wonder. What was it she said?"
"She admitted to relief at having got rid of her husband so easily." He shrugged. "Seems clear enough to me."
Walsh started to walk again. "It wouldn't stand up in a court of law for a minute," he mused. "But it's interesting, definitely interesting." He came to an abrupt halt. "I think she's cracking at long last. I got the impression that Mrs. Goode certainly thinks so. What's her part in this? She can't have been involved in Maybury's disappearance. We had her thoroughly checked and there's no doubt she was in America at the time."
"Accessory after the fact? She and the Cattrell woman have known Mrs. Maybury did it but have kept quiet for the sake of the children." He shrugged again. "Bar that, she seems straight enough. She doesn't know much about the ice house, that's for sure."
"Unless she's bluffing." He pondered for a few minutes. "Doesn't it seem odd to you that she can have lived here for eight years and not have seen inside that place?"
The moon came out from behind a cloud and lit their way with a cold grey lustre. McLoughlin switched off the torch. "Perhaps she didn't fancy it," he observed with grim humour. "Perhaps she knew what was in there."
This remark brought Walsh up short again. "Well, well," he murmured, "I wonder if that's it. It makes sense. No one's going to poke around in a place where they know there's a dead body. They're a hard-bitten trio. I can't see any of them going out of her way to do what's morally right. They'd harbour a corpse quite happily, provided it was out of sight. What do you think?"
His Sergeant scowled. "Women are a closed book to me, sir. I wouldn't even pretend to understand them."
Walsh chuckled. "Kelly been playing you up again?"
The laugh pierced McLoughlin's brain, scintillating and sharp as a needle. He turned away and thrust his hands and the torch deep into the pockets of his bomber jacket. Tempt me, he thought, just tempt me. "We've had a row. Nothing serious."
Walsh, who knew enough of McLoughlin's prolonged marital problems to be sympathetic, grunted. "Funnily enough, I saw her a couple of days ago with Jack Booth. She was swingin
g along without a care in the world, never seen her so cheerful. She's not pregnant, I suppose? She had a real bloom on her."
The bastard should have hit him. It would have hurt less. "That's probably because she's gone to live with Jack," he said casually. "She left last week." Now laugh, you sod, laugh, laugh, laugh, and give me an excuse to smash your face in.
Walsh, at a loss, gave McLoughlin's arm an awkward pat. He understood now why the lad had been so touchy the last few days. To lose your wife was bad enough, to lose her to your closest friend was a belter. My God! Jack Booth, of all people! He'd been best man at their wedding. Well, well. It explained a good deal. Why McLoughlin walked alone these days. Why Jack had suddenly decided to leave the force to work for a security firm in Southampton. "I had no idea. I'm sorry."
"It's no big deal, sir. It was all very amicable. No hard feelings on either side."
He was very cool about it. "Perhaps it's a temporary infatuation," Walsh suggested lamely. "Perhaps she'll come back when she's got over it."
McLoughlin's teeth gleamed white inside his grin, but the night hid the black rage in his eyes. "Do me a favour, sir, that's about the last thing I want to hear. God knows we never had much to say to each other before she went What the hell would we talk about if she came back?" Jesus, he wanted to hit someone. Did they all know? Were they all laughing? He would kill the first person who laughed.
He quickened his pace. "Thank God we didn't have children. This way, no one loses."
Walsh, following a few steps behind, pondered the capriciousness of human nature. He could recall a conversation he had had with McLoughlin only months before when the younger man had blamed his marital problems on the fact that he and Kelly had no children. She was bored, he claimed, found her job as a secretary unsatisfying, needed a baby to keep her occupied. Walsh had wisely kept silent, knowing from experience with his daughter that advice on domestic disputes was rarely appreciated, but he had hoped quite fervently that Fate would intervene to prevent some wretched baby being born to keep this ill-matched couple occupied. His own daughter's first pregnancy at the age of sixteen when she was still at school and unmarried had been a shock to him, but the greater shock was to discover that his wife and daughter had never really liked each other. His daughter blamed two disastrous marriages and four children on her restless seeking after love; while his wife blamed their daughter for her wasted opportunities and lack of self-esteem. George tried to make up for past failings by taking an interest in his grandchildren, but he found it difficult. His interest tended to be critical. He thought them wild and undisciplined and blamed this on his daughter's leniency and their lack of a father-figure.
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