Caroline Graham - Written in Blood

‘Tom!’

‘What?’ He lowered the paper. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Try and be more careful.’ She was running across the room and picking up Kilmowski, who immediately struggled to be put down.

‘What have I done?’

‘You could have really hurt him.’ The kitten was already plodding back to the settee, where it started to make its way determinedly up Barnaby’s trousers.

‘Do you want your drink now or with your meal?’

‘Now, please, love.’

A glass of Santa Carolina Grand Reserve was poured and very toothsome it turned out to be. Barnaby forced himself to sip rather than glug. Tomorrow, when the children were here, they would have champagne. A lovely smell was wafting from the direction of the oven. Rabbit casserole baked with lemon grass, capers and celeriac. Comice pears were in there too. He had made a sauce of half-fat cream cheese pushed twice through a sieve then flavoured with a dash of Madeira and some toasted amaretti crumbs.

Barnaby drank a little more and lay back, content. This, even with pins and needles being systematically pushed and pulled about one’s upper arm, was definitely the life.

The phone rang. Joyce took it in the kitchen. She cried out with pleasure. ‘Oh, hello darling - how lovely to talk to you.’

Barnaby’s happiness went on hold. Something had gone wrong. They weren’t coming. Or, if they were, they couldn’t stay. If they could stay it was only overnight. Perhaps they were bringing people and he and Joyce would never have a chance to talk to their daughter or Nicholas properly.

‘Tom?’ There was the sound of the receiver being laid down and Joyce’s face appeared in the serving hatch. ‘Do you want a quick word? She’s just ringing to check we’ve got the time right for Heathrow.’

‘Might as well.’

‘Don’t come round. I’ll pass it through.’

Cully sounded as if she was in the next room. It was going to be great to see him and Ma again. She had bought a super carved wooden rack in Poland for all his spices. What was he cooking tomorrow night? Had he remembered to video The Crucible ? Tour had been terrific. Director an absolute toad. Nicholas utterly brilliant as Don John. She had never really got Beatrice right.

Barnaby listened to all this with a glad heart but, as she was about to ring off, thought it wise to inject a cautionary note.

‘We may have a bit of a problem this end, Cully.’ As he spoke his hand rested gently on Kilmowski, asleep on his shoulder and gradually slipping off. ‘Regarding the kitten. I’m afraid your mother’s getting terribly fond of it.’

‘You don’t have to go in, Amy.’

‘I do, I do have to go in.’ But she could not turn the handle.

They were on the landing outside Ralph’s room. It was the first time Amy had entered Gresham House since the terrible night when she had so nearly died.

Walking through the kitchen, crossing the clammy, weed-infested flagstones of the hall, climbing the stairs, had been bad. But nothing like as bad as this.

‘Shall I open it?’

‘If you like.’ But when Sue stretched out her hand Amy cried, ‘Wait a minute!’

She was having second thoughts. Or rather twentieth, thirtieth and even fiftieth thoughts, for she had imagined this moment at least as many times. Now she asked herself why she was so determined. What sensible reason could there possibly be?

After all, he wouldn’t be there. She would see the dappled horse with the worn leather saddle and scarlet reins that he had picked her up and put her on the first time he had brought her home. And the fire guard with narrow brass trim. Books and models and the beautiful scientific drawings at which he had excelled. But Ralph, or ‘the remains’ as the police had insisted on referring to him, was resting with his sister beneath the yew trees in St Chad’s churchyard.

Sue had tried to understand what she viewed as Amy’s amazing benevolence in permitting this, but without success. In her friend’s place she would have arranged for Honoria to be cremated then flushed the ashes down the loo. Eventually Sue came to the conclusion that Amy, after the discovery that her husband was not only bisexual but occasionally unfaithful, had had a change of heart about him, but she was mistaken. Amy merely felt that if someone was prepared to kill, however madly or wrongly, to avenge the only person they had ever loved, the least you could do was let them rest in the same grave.

Sue now shuffled her feet, coughed to draw attention to the fact that time was passing and glanced sideways. Amy’s face had become tight and expressionless and she was screwing up her eyes as if braced for some scene of visual devastation. A second later she flung open the door.

The candelabra were still there. The room was full of them. The whole place had been blazing with light apparently, like an altar in some great Romanesque cathedral. Hundreds of candles. Their congealed drippings sticking to the floor and all over the furniture.

Ralph’s likeness gazed and smiled and laughed from every aspect of the room. As a baby, toddler and young boy. Many of the photographs were propped up, unframed, against the candle holders. It was a miracle the place hadn’t burned down.

Amy had been afraid the room would smell, but there was only the ever-present fragrance of mildew. Someone, perhaps the police, must have opened the windows. They had been very kind, as had everyone, especially Dennis Rainbird, the funeral director. He it was, after the first coffin had been raised, who had tactfully disposed of the load of heavy books it contained. He had also made a point, when Amy had refused to visit his premises to view the dear departed, of assuring her that Mr Lyddiard had been most beautifully embalmed. He appeared to be under the impression that this would be a comfort.

‘This is where he was lying.’ Amy went across to a large refectory table in the centre of the room. ‘Under a white silk bedspread.’

Sue didn’t know how to respond. The whole story had struck her as so completely revolting that she had nearly passed out when Amy first told her. To think of Honoria up here talking to a corpse, perhaps even holding it - God. It didn’t bear thinking of.

‘Did I tell you he asked for me, in Spain, just before he died? She said I’d gone away.’

‘Amy - that’s terrible. But surely he’d know it wasn’t true.’

‘Oh yes. He knew her very well. It’s just ... it would have been nice to say goodbye.’

Amy picked up a school report. One of many draped over the fire guard like little printed paper towels.

‘Bright but mischievous.’ ‘Distracts other pupils.’ ‘A definite gift for languages.’ ‘Needs to concentrate more.’ ‘A popular boy.’

‘Everyone liked him,’ said Amy. ‘It’s all down here.’

Sue’s feelings of intrusion and inadequacy deepened. Standing helplessly by she made a clumsy indefinite movement demonstrating a wish to comfort, then let her arms fall once more to her sides.

‘I thought he didn’t want children, but he knew, you see, what was wrong with him.’

That was why he had always taken the responsibility for contraception. Not, as he had told his wife, because he was worried about the side effects of the pill, but for her own safety.

He should have told her though. That was the hardest thing to bear. Not unfaithfulness or the fact that he had sexual inclinations of which she had known nothing, but this decision to carry alone the dark knowledge that their days of happiness were numbered. Perhaps he was afraid she would reject him.

‘I’m sure that wasn’t it,’ interrupted Sue as Amy showed signs of increasing distress. ‘He wanted to save you pain. We do when we love someone.’