Caroline Graham - Written in Blood

‘Perhaps tomorrow.’

‘I’ve found out what “Slangwhang” means.’

‘Slang what?’

‘You know - his daft play.’

‘Oh yes. How did you do that?’

‘Looked it up in the dictionary.’

‘ You’ve —?’ Barnaby stopped himself - immediately but, he saw, not quite in time. Christ, what an incredibly patronising thing to think, let alone say. ‘Sorry, Gavin. Really.’

‘S’ all right.’ But Troy had gone very pink. ‘Understandable. I’m no scholar, as you know. We got it for Talisa Leanne. For when she has homework, like.’

‘So what does it mean, “slangwhang”?’

‘Noisy or abusive talk. He’s a pretentious git. That the right word?’

‘Dead right.’ Barnaby finished his drink, pushed his cup aside and was about to go into his mini-discovery on the Lyddiard front when several more men returned.

He saw at once that the crew brought no further revelations. They looked dull, bored and mildly resentful, as people do who have spent several hours getting nowhere and could have told you this would be the case before they started.

Detective Constable Willoughby approached Barnaby’s desk and was relieved when Troy got up and walked away, for he had suffered more than once from the sergeant’s abrasive manner. Barnaby indicated the vacant chair and Willoughby sat, placing his hat carefully on his knees and his notebook carefully inside his hat.

Barnaby prepared to listen with a mixture of sympathy and irritation. There weren’t many pro cons as tender round the edges as this one. The lad would either have to buck his ideas up or get out of the Force. Barnaby suspected it would come to the latter and only hoped this wouldn’t be by way of a nervous breakdown.

‘I’ve been talking to Mr St John, sir, as instructed,’ began Willoughby. ‘He hasn’t anything to add to his account of Hadleigh’s visit, or the evening and its aftermath. But there was something he noticed during the day, though I’m afraid it’s very trivial—’

‘I’ll decide what’s trivial, constable.’

‘Yes, sir. As he was seeing Mr Hadleigh off the premises Miss Lyddiard came out of the gate at Plover’s Rest and cycled away.’

‘Do you have a time for this?’ Barnaby picked up his pen.

‘Eleven thirty. Mr St John remembers because he lost exactly half an hour from his writing period. She came back on two occasions that afternoon. If you recall, Borodino is almost precisely opposite—’

‘Yes, yes. Get on with it.’

‘Hadleigh didn’t open the door, but that apparently was not uncommon if people knew who it was on the step.’

There was a pause. Willoughby, having reached his conclusion, started running his fingers round the rim of his cap, then gripped the peak tightly. In no time at all the silence became unbearable to him.

‘He’s a character isn’t he - St John. As for that dog ...’

‘Thanks, Willoughby.’ Barnaby smiled in a distracted way across the desk. ‘Well done.’

‘Oh.’ Willoughby stumbled to his feet and tucked his hat beneath his arm. The notebook fell out. He bent down and retrieved it, his face glowing with pleasure. ‘Yes sir. Thank you.’

Barnaby was not listening. Sitting back, eyes closed, he was already transported to the Green, Midsomer Worthy as it might have looked that cold, deep frosted morning on the last day of Gerald Hadleigh’s life. He imagined a certain amount of excitement would have been present at the prospect of meeting a famous author. Food no doubt had to be prepared and packed up ready to go over to Plover’s Rest. By mid morning the owner of this delightful residence would be disturbing an old man who only wanted to be left in peace to get on with his spy story. At eleven o’clock a woman, weeping her heart out and filling a basket with soggy tissues was due to be interrupted by an equally unwelcome visitor. After their meeting this person had gone straight to the home of Gerald Hadleigh. Finding him absent she had returned later. And then a third time.

Barnaby opened his eyes. His heart gathered speed as a possible reason for this oddly persistent behaviour occurred. He made himself wait a moment, breathing slowly and deeply until he felt more composed.

Laura might still be in the shop. He looked up the number and punched it out. She answered straight away.

‘Mrs Hutton? Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. I was wondering if you would do something for me.’

‘I was just going next door for a drink. Is it urgent?’

‘Yes,’ said Barnaby. ‘I rather think it is.’

Amy was in her room working on Rompers . She had been up there since five o’clock and so far had not been troubled either by a tinkling bell or any vocal demands.

At the moment she was worrying about her prose style, which was beginning to sound rather too cosily familiar. But was it, wondered Amy, chewing the tip of her Biro, worth constantly searching out fresh adjectives? Wouldn’t readers feel more at home with tried and true combinations? And this was not, she argued, simply an excuse for authorial laziness, for surely there were certain pairings so felicitous that even the most gifted scribe could hardly be expected to improve upon them.

A quick glance at the dawn sky from any bedroom window showed rosy fingers at their very best. Black hair, in certain lights, definitely took on the glossy hue of a raven’s wing. And where was the besotted eye that did not shine exactly like a star when alighting on the object of its affection?

Amy was slightly comforted in the knowledge that this waning of writerly confidence was not entirely unknown even among the most successful. Max Jennings had described how he always started a new book convinced that this time the relationship was going to be one of unalloyed bliss and that they would be walking off into the sunset hand in hand with never a harsh work spoken. But it never happened. Long before the end of Chapter One they’d be back in the thick of it, screaming, swearing and throwing plates.

Amy sighed, gathered her thoughts and applied herself once more. The scene on which she was working was a dramatic one. Araminta had escaped from Black Rufus by leaping from his droshky (suitably clad in a Donna Karan jump suit) into a drift of newly fallen snow. Emerging, she had been reluctantly compelled to abandon her mock-ermine Versace throw with genuine amber toggles and rhinestone hood and was now fleeing across a frozen lake pursued by bloodhounds. Amy chewed her pen some more. Decided bloodhounds were a bit tame and substituted wolves.

She had no problem empathising with her perilously placed heroine, for she herself was shivering in a sub-zero temperature. She got up and placed her mittened hand on the rusting radiator. Rather pointlessly, for it had been stone cold all day and, sure enough, remained so.

Amy jumped up and down a bit, the thick ridged soles of her fur boots bouncing on the threadbare rug. She blew on her fingertips and rubbed her cheeks hard, but the friction only made them sore. She decided, bearing in mind Honoria’s promise that the heating would definitely be looked into, to go down to the library and have a word with her sister-in-law.

Amy made her way along the landing, her passage marked by dark, heavily varnished portraits of grandly robed Lyddiards going back to the sixteenth century. Her own particular aversion was a hawk-faced judge who looked as if he not only derived great pleasure from passing the death sentence but for two pins would roll up his sleeves and carry it out.

Honoria was at her desk severely engrossed in matters dexter and sinister. She looked aloof and far removed from worldly things. Though the one-bar electric fire was on, the big, high-ceilinged room felt almost as cold as the one upstairs. Amy hovered in the doorway but without attracting any response.