Caroline Graham - Written in Blood

‘No.’ Sue spoke from the kitchen, where she was filling her painting jam jar with water. She came back and put it on the table before lighting the lamp. ‘I just want someone here.’

‘Is he violent?’

‘Only inside.’

It was Amy who saw Brian, earlier than expected, getting out of his car and trudging across the Green. By then Sue had finished setting the scene of quiet, creative solitude that her husband observed through the sitting-room window.

Amy held her breath when Sue responded to his urgent rapping by slowly rising, picking up an envelope, leaving the room and, on her return, slowly drawing the curtains.

Amy could not help noticing that, though Sue did this in a calm, controlled way, her head was tilted back at quite a sharp angle. Amy guessed that this was because Sue was afraid to look at Brian, but she was wrong. The truth was that Sue made this avoidance not out of fear but from the certain knowledge that if, even once, she had stared directly into her husband’s eyes she would not be able to stop her fist crashing straight through the glass and into his stupid face.

After a dietetically correct lunch Barnaby returned to the incident room. Although it was barely three o’clock several members of the outdoor team were clocking back in, though Sergeant Troy was not among them. He had been detailed to harass Brian Clapton further, on the principle that the devil a suspect knew was more likely to slip past his defences than a devil he didn’t. Especially if that first devil was already able to scare the shit out of him.

Barnaby was on the point of going over the statement Amy Lyddiard had made in his office for the third time. His previous reading had reactivated that earlier irritating niggle that there was something buried in there that did not quite add up but had not revealed precisely what it was.

He wondered if she had contradicted a remark made earlier, on the morning the murder investigation had begun. That interview would be under ‘Lyddiard, H’, for it was Honoria who had spoken at such domineering and bombastic length. Amy’s contribution, as Barnaby remembered it, had been fragmentary to say the least.

Leaving his own screen, he applied himself to the nearest vacant keyboard and began his search. As he tapped away he was momentarily distracted by thoughts of his bête noir , who had elected at the morning’s post-briefing sort-out to revisit Gresham House. To Barnaby’s deep chagrin the malicious impulse which had prompted him to encourage Meredith to pursue the matter of Honoria’s fingerprints the other day had sharply backfired. The man had returned with the news that, although Miss Lyddiard would, under no circumstances, visit the station, she would be prepared, provided he himself was present at the procedure, to co-operate in this matter at her home.

Barnaby screwed his eyes up against the green dazzle. He recalled Honoria’s responses as completely negative and, as he ran through them, it seemed that he was right. Amy had asked a single tremulous question and offered one contribution and that domestic.

‘I made us a drink, cocoa actually—’

At which point she had been rudely cut short by her sister-in-law. Barnaby saw no significance in this. The interruptive mode of speech was natural to Honoria and he felt it hardly likely that a description of cocoa-making would reveal anything of moment.

The chief inspector slid his mouse about, scrolled back, then highlighted the context of Amy’s remark, starting with his own question to Honoria.

B: Did you retire straight away?

H: Yes. I had a headache. The visitor was allowed to smoke. A disgusting habit. He wouldn’t have done it here.

B: And you, Mrs Lyddiard?

A: Not quite straight away. First I—

Barnaby pushed his chair back in such a hurry it crashed into the desk behind and the policewoman sitting there jumped, staring at him in surprise. Mumbling an apology, he got back to his own machine and quickly found what he was looking for. It was right at the beginning. He had asked Amy if they had gone directly home from Plover’s Rest after the meeting and she had replied:

‘Yes. I made us some hot drinks then went upstairs to work on my book. Honoria took hers into the study.’

Well, it was a discrepancy all right, but a very small one. Very small indeed. In fact, if it were any smaller ... Barnaby felt his growing excitement dim before it had a chance to really get going. For what was in a word? Especially one as flexible as ‘retire’. To some people it could mean disappearing into the bathroom for a good long soak, to others slipping away to the den, pouring a stiff one and putting on the headphones. Why shouldn’t Honoria have used it to mean going into her study to read?

But it said here she had a headache. Barnaby cursed himself for not being more specific. If only he had phrased his question more precisely. Did you go to bed straight away? Or even, did you go upstairs? Then, providing of course Amy was telling the truth, he would have caught Honoria out in a deliberate lie. Barnaby was mildly disconcerted to realise how pleased he was at the thought and how much he would have enjoyed confronting her with it.

He ran through both statements again, but there was nothing else that could explain his previous sense of unease. That tiny contradiction was the grit in the oyster.

He sighed, closed both files and opened Laura Hutton’s. Quickly scanning through the first, unrewarding meeting he turned to the follow-up, where she had drunk too much and wept and railed against the man who had, as she saw it, wilfully refused to care for her.

Barnaby read very closely, his concentration narrowed till it all but blotted out the room. As before he looked for incompatible, conflicting or just plain careless remarks. Unfortunately, by the very nature of her admissions, everything she described - the visit to Hadleigh’s house in the summer, the theft of the photograph, her love-lorn nocturnal ramblings - were all unverifiable.

There was a rattle of china, a pleasant smell of coffee and a cup and saucer were placed upon his desk.

‘Ah.’ Barnaby identified the bearer of his refreshment. ‘You’re back. What news from the Rialto?’

‘Gone over to Bingo, last I heard.’

‘Don’t try my patience, sergeant. I’m not in the mood.’

Troy, wearing his what-have-I-said-now? expression, sat down and unwrapped a Walnut Whip. ‘A right time I’ve had.’

‘With Clapton?’

‘Without Clapton, more like.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Went to the school and found he’d left early. Went to his house and the wife says he’s at his mother’s. Go to his mother’s and what do we find?’

Mr Clapton had opened the door and had been so devastated by the sight of a police car parked directly in front of his gate that, even though Troy was not wearing uniform, he had found himself seized fiercely by the arm and forcibly dragged into the house in a nice reversal of the usual procedure.

As the door was slammed behind him, Mrs Clapton appeared. Gift-wrapped in shiny nylon, she was wringing her plump hands and crying, ‘He won’t come out of the toilet.’

And he wouldn’t either, in spite of Sergeant Troy’s repeated knocks and crisply worded entreaties, spoken in a very loud voice over pop music pounding away downstairs.

When the sergeant had eventually given up, Mr and Mrs Clapton saw him off the premises as far as the gate. As he was getting into the car some people walked by and Mrs Clapton called out in a loud voice, ‘We’ll certainly keep our eyes open for him, sergeant. It’s very sad when anyone loses a little dog.’

Troy told the story well and Barnaby laughed.

‘Do you want me to get a warrant, chief? Bring him in.’